Six days after US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, top White House officials told House lawmakers they are now focused ondrawing Tehran back to negotiations— though members of both parties said the precise strategy to do so was not clear.
“One of the things that was discussed this morning is that we now need Iran to engage with us in direct good-faith talks, negotiations, not through third parties, not through other countries, they need to sit down at the table with us,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Friday after an all-member classified briefing.
That message on diplomacy was delivered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told lawmakers that he wanted to meet “one-on-one” with Iranian leadership and not through a “third party,” according to another senior Republican, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas.
But the former Foreign Affairs Committee chairman was one of multiple House lawmakers who told CNN he was personally “skeptical” of the plan: “I’m clear eyed about the Ayatollah. I love this ‘give peace a chance’ thing, and let’s try. You have to try the negotiations. So we’ll do it for what, a month? Then they’re gonna go underground.”
PresidentDonald Trump’s next steps on diplomacy with Iran, however, were not made clear, multiple lawmakers said. Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said no one from the administration suggested “there were any overtures or discussions happening right now” on the diplomatic front.
And Trump himself fueled the uncertainty over his next steps with Iran, telling reporters Friday afternoon that future military strikes were indeed on the table if the US learned that Tehran was again working to enrich uranium. Shortly after, the president also blasted Iran’s leader for failing to thank him for sparing his life, and Trump confirmed he had been considering the “possible removal of sanctions” to help Iran but decided against it after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s recent video message describing a victory over Israel and the US.
Like theSenate’s briefing one day earlier, many Democratic lawmakers emerged from the hourlong House briefing from top Trump administration officials with more questions about the US decision to strike in Iran — including the decision not to vet the plan with Congress — and its strategy in the weeks ahead.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN “it wasn’t particularly enlightening” and said there remains “a whole host of questions that need to be answered.”
Within Congress, the strikes on Iranian facilities has emerged as an intense flashpoint, with many Democrats enraged they received no official warning and some going as far as to suggest it warrants impeachment. But inside the briefing room in the Capitol Friday, three lawmakers described the mood as professional and collegial, with no outbursts from either party.
Two Democrats in the room said they were surprised when Johnson started off the briefing with what they characterized as a sharply “partisan” speech, which one described as highly unusual in that kind of setting. Part of the reason there were no fireworks, those members said, was the limited amount of time lawmakers were able to ask questions. By the end of the briefing, there were still roughly a dozen lawmakers waiting in line to ask their question — mostly Democrats, according to those members.
Multiple lawmakers said they did receive more clarity about one key aspect of the strike: Whether the intention of the US mission was to rid Iran of nuclear material.
“The purpose of the mission was to eliminate certain particular aspects of their nuclear program. Those were eliminated. To get rid of the nuclear material was not part of the mission,” GOP Rep. Greg Murphy said, adding that the administration’s goals were “well satisfied.”
McCaul added that “most of” the uranium remains at Iran’s nuclear facilities but agreed that it was not the purpose of the recent strikes.
“There is enriched uranium in the facilities that moves around, but that was not the intent or the mission,” McCaul said. “We need a full accounting. That’s why Iran has to come to the table directly with us, so the IAEA can account for every ounce of enriched uranium that’s there, I don’t think it’s going out of the country, I think it’s at the facilities.”
Illinois Democratic Rep. Bill Foster, a former PhD physicist who spent 25 years in a national research lab, said he was disappointed the administration did not say the mission’s purpose was to “secure or destroy” Iran’s nuclear material.
He was “very disappointed,” he said, that members were not told much about the status of Iran’s nuclear inventory “and what that meant for the breakout time to Iran’s first nuclear device.”
“There is, I think, frankly, very over-optimistic portrayal of what was and was not accomplished by this issue, because we do not have understanding and control of where all that material is,” Foster said.
Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, also raised questions about the mismatch in information about “Iranian capabilities and Iranian intent” that the House received in the briefing and what it had been told in the past.
“What was briefed to congress today is massively different than what has been told to Congress over the last year up until a month ago both Iranian capabilities and Iranian intent,” the Colorado Democrat said.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Friday’s classified briefing, saying she was “almost sorry” she attended and later adding she would not have authorized the mission.
“Let me just say, I’m almost sorry I went to this briefing, because almost everything that was there is in the public domain,” Pelosi said, downplaying the substance of the briefing. “A little bit additional information.”
Pelosi also expressed skepticism about the extent of the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program after Trump’s claims that Iran’s nuclear sites had been “obliterated” by the strikes.
“We do know, in the public domain, that the enriched uranium is still there. And that was never part of the goal. So … let’s just say, very clearly, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” she said.
CNN’s Nicky Robertson and David Wright contributed to this report.