House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) emerged from a classified briefing with Cabinet officials on Monday split over whether the U.S. faced an imminent threat from Iran that necessitated and permitted the president to take military action under U.S. statute and the Constitution.

Before entering the briefing, held by administration officials for a bipartisan group of congressional leaders, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the U.S. launched the strikes because Israel was determined to carry out an operation against Iran, which U.S. intelligence showed would have prompted retaliation by Iran against American assets.

He also said that the U.S. goal was to degrade Iran’s ballistic missile capacities and sink its navy, not to effect regime change.

Johnson emerged from the briefing offering strong support for the administration’s actions and echoing Rubio’s explanation of the strikes.

“The most critical point is that this was a defensive measure, a defensive operation,” Johnson said. “Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deemed to be an existential threat. Iran was building missiles at a radical, rapid clip, to the point where our allies in the region do not keep up.”

Johnson argued that, if the U.S. had failed to act alongside Israel and instead waited for Iran to attack its forces in retaliation, “the consequences of inaction on our part could have been devastating. … those losses would have been far greater than if we had done what we did.”

He added that, if U.S. officials had deferred action, they would instead now be facing questions from Congress about why they had not acted sooner. He said that he believes the operation “will be wound up quickly, by God’s grace.”

Warner said that the war is “a war of choice that has been acknowledged by others [that] was dictated by Israel’s goals and timelines. Israel is a great ally of America. I stand firmly with Israel, but I believe at the end of the day, when we are talking about putting American soldiers in harm’s way, when we have American casualties and expectations of more, there needs to be the proof of an imminent threat to American interests. I still don’t think that standard has been met.”

He also criticized the administration and Trump for their shifting articulation of the U.S.’ goals, and said that the administration has no clear plan for what it will do if there is an uprising by Iranian demonstrators followed by another crackdown by the remaining regime.

Warner said that, in January, when the Iranian regime was massacring protesters in the streets, “you could have actually made a case then that taking a strike towards the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] might have pushed the people forward and the regime to crumble,” but said that such an action was impossible at the time because of the operation in Venezuela and the tensions with European allies over Trump’s ambitions to take over Greenland.

“I might not have agreed with an action then, but at least there was a logic to that moment in time,” Warner said. “Now it appears that the timeline is not being driven by American imminent security concerns, but by others.”

In a brief statement to reporters, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he found the administration officials’ answers “completely and totally insufficient” and said that the briefing provided more questions than answers.

Lawmakers also indicated that the administration is likely to request additional funding from Congress to replenish weapons stockpiles expended in the war.

Johnson emphasized after the briefing that administration officials had made it clear that the “objective is not regime change” and that the U.S. mission did not involve eliminating the ayatollah or other Iranian leaders, several dozen of whom have now been killed.

While none directly contradicted the Trump administration, some Senate Republicans seemed to take a different view of whether the U.S. should be pursuing a change in the Iranian regime.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) emphasized that the Iranian regime’s leadership is “crazy as a bed bug” and composed of “just insane” religious fanatics who cannot be reasoned with, and that their nuclear ambitions would set off a global arms race.

“I don’t want America to be the world’s policeman,” Kennedy said. “But I don’t want these crazy people in Iran to be the world’s policeman either. And if you give them a nuclear weapon, they will be.”

Pressed on whether he would think the administration has done enough if Iran remains ruled by someone who is, as he put it, “insane” and pursuing a nuclear weapon, Kennedy said, “that would not be my preference,” but he said he could not predict what the outcome of the war will entail.

“I’m assuming that the administration is destroying all capability to develop a nuclear weapon to the extent that we haven’t destroyed it already, destroying their ability to manufacture missiles, destroying their launchers,” Kennedy continued. “The key to controlling Iran is controlling the Revolutionary Guard and the military. And I assume that they’re trying to give them a curb stomping as well.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) argued that “regime change has already occurred there, one way or the other, since all the senior leadership is now gone.”

Asked whether it would be a sufficient outcome if someone else from the current Iranian government ends up leading the country at the end of the U.S. operations, Lankford said it is dependent on the posture that Iran’s next leader takes — whether they still threaten Iran’s neighbors, attack the United States, pursue a nuclear weapon and seek to eliminate Israel.

“I think that’s the litmus test,” Lankford said.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said that the question of Iran’s governance is up to the Iranian people.

The duration of the war, he said, is “just a matter of how much fight they have left and how long the Iranian people are going to put up with this … they get to choose their next leadership, hopefully, and we’re eliminating a threat to the United States and our assets. After that, it’s up to the Iranian people to choose.”

Pressed on whether he would be satisfied if the regime remains in power at the end of the war, Mullin emphasized that the U.S. was no longer willing to allow Iran to present a threat, but “what they choose next will be up to the Iranian people. We’re giving that opportunity, but we’re not going to fight for their country harder than they’re willing to fight.”

Johnson argued after the briefing that it would be “frightening” and “dangerous” for Congress to approve a war powers resolution to “take [Trump’s] authority away right not to finish the job.” 

Democrats — who plan to force votes on such resolutions demanding the end of U.S. operations against Iran without congressional approval — did not articulate a clear exit strategy from the conflict in the unlikely event that that resolution passes.

“Ask the drafters of the resolution,” Warner replied, when asked about the consequences of pulling U.S. troops out of ongoing operations in Iran. Warner said he intends to support the resolutions.

Asked the same question, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) emphasized that the key question in the war powers vote is one of congressional authority and that the White House needs to explain the threat that administration officials said the U.S. faced.

He argued that Rubio’s public statements — that Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal was growing to a point of “immunity” allowing it to “hold the whole world hostage” within the next year or year and a half — illustrate that the arsenal did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S.

“The president’s been all over the place. He’s, in effect, workshopping a war. It’s like he’s a kid with a puzzle trying to fit the pieces together in a way that creates a picture,” Blumenthal continued.

Asked whether there was any form of an operation in Iran that he could support, if the administration presented a clear plan to Congress for its approval, Blumenthal emphasized that he had no regrets about the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders.

“If this war, in effect, were not a war and simply the kind of strike that we did in Venezuela, where we removed the key leader, it might be a lot more palatable,” Blumenthal said. “Here’s what really concerns me: the president is talking about regime change, and there’s no way to accomplish regime change from 30,000 feet. There is no precedent for bombing successfully achieving regime change. There have to be boots on the ground.”

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explicitly did not rule out a U.S. ground operation in separate comments on Monday.

Blumenthal said that such an on-the-ground operation would be unacceptable to the American people and set off a “forever war.”

“I think we are on a very perilous path without defined objectives,” Blumenthal said. “If it’s only to kill Ayatollah Khamenei, we’ve accomplished that objective. Right now, we’re way beyond it in a regional war that is spreading in both intensity and geographic scope.”

And asked whether Trump had the authority to launch the war, Blumenthal responded that Trump “doesn’t have the power to continue it, constitutionally, without approval by Congress.”

Senators remained divided about the success of the American military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program following a classified briefing on the subject from Cabinet officials on Thursday. Several Republicans hailed the strike as a success, while some Democrats said it had barely set Iran’s nuclear program back and many others on both sides said that it’s too soon to accurately judge the attack’s success. 

The briefing led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe also does not appear to have dissuaded Democrats from pursuing plans to call up a war powers resolution to block further military action against Iran. 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that “we’ve caused catastrophic damage to Iran’s nuclear program.” He said Iran might try to rebuild the program at some point, but that the U.S. and Israel had struck critical targets in all parts of the nuclear weapons manufacturing process.

“You have seen several experts in the last couple of days, who I think it’s fair to say are not Donald Trump partisans, use words like ‘effectively destroyed,’ ‘catastrophic damage,’ ‘set back for years,’” Cotton said. “I think it’s safe to say that we have struck a major blow, alongside our friends in Israel, against Iran’s nuclear program that is going to … protect the world from the risk of an Iranian nuclear program for years.”

Cotton declined to comment on whether Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium was destroyed or had been relocated, adding “it was not part of the mission to destroy all their enriched uranium, or seize it, or anything else.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that the program had been set back “years, not months,” adding, “I think it’s absurd that any member of the Senate would say … that this wasn’t necessary.”

“Nobody is going to work in these three sites any time soon. They’re not going to get into them any time soon. Their operational capability was obliterated,” Graham said. He also said he doesn’t know where Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is, but likewise argued that it was “not part of the target set.”

The South Carolina senator additionally said, “I don’t want people to think that the problem is over, because it’s not. They’re going to keep trying this until they change their stated goal” of eliminating Israel.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said he was “very confident it’s been set way back, a year at the minimum.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said that the strikes had “accomplished the purpose of destroying the nuclear ambitions,” adding that assessments would be ongoing “but [are] very positive.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) declined to say whether he was confident that Iran’s nuclear program had been destroyed or disabled, but told Jewish Insider that the briefing had “set the record straight” from a leaked low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency report indicating the strikes had limited effect and only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months. He said that report was not accurate based on the information he received.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told JI the briefing had “affirmed” his support for the strikes.

“You can’t possibly know with certainty” if the program was destroyed, Fetterman said. “We have to get beyond the partisanship. … We will know more and more as there’s more time. But at this point, it was the right thing. … What’s out so far confirms that significant damage was done.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said he did not learn anything new in the briefing that would impact his support for Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

“I didn’t hear anything in there that I haven’t read in the press. I think the operation was obviously a great success, and the president’s achievement in getting a ceasefire in place, I think, is really significant. And now it’s a question of making that stick and pursuing our objectives going forward,” Hawley told JI while leaving the briefing.

Others were more pessimistic about the strike.

“Right now, it seems to me that leaked DIA report is right, that we only set this program back a handful of months, and that is not obliteration,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), one of the most vocal critics of the strike, said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), reading off of a card of prewritten, typed remarks, said that he “did not receive an adequate answer” to the question of whether Iran’s nuclear stockpile had been destroyed.

“What was clear is that there was no coherent strategy, no end game, no plan, no specific, no detailed plan on how Iran does not attain a nuclear weapon,” Schumer said. “Anyone in that meeting, anyone — if they’re being honest with themselves, their constituents, their colleagues — would know that we need to enforce the War Powers Act and force them to articulate an answer to some specific questions and a coherent strategy.”

Many senators said that the full impact of the strikes will take longer to understand, as more intelligence is gathered.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said that the briefing confirmed that the mission had gone off as administration officials had planned: “The guys hit the targets as planned. The munitions worked exactly as planned, and the results were as expected.”

Rounds added that it is impossible to say exactly how long the nuclear program was delayed “until we actually get the real analysis of proof of what happened.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that “the reporting will continue to come out around” whether the program was set back by months or years, but added, “as Gen. [Dan] Caine and [former national security official] Brett McGurk, if you heard his analysis, followed up and confirmed that the first two phases of the operation seemed very successful.”

Asked if Trump had been honest in describing the program as eliminated, Shaheen said, “you’d have to ask the president.”

Shaheen said that the briefing was a “good follow-up” to a news conference by Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earlier in the day, where Caine discussed the strike on Fordow and the bunker busting bomb used.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said it’s “going to take some time to get a final assessment of how much damage [was done],” adding that he’s concerned that President Donald Trump “jump[ed] to a conclusion too early” that the program was “obliterated.”

“I hope that is the final assessment. But if not, does that end up providing a false sense of comfort to the American people?” Warner said. He added that some of Iran’s enriched uranium “was never going to be taken out by a bunker-buster bomb, so some of that obviously remains in Iran.”

Warner said there are still questions about how quickly Iran could rush to a nuclear device using the material it still retains, particularly if it did not plan to mount the bomb on a missile.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) also said that the briefers had told the senators it was “too early to know” whether the program was destroyed.

Asked by JI if he learned anything during the briefing that changed his assessment of Trump’s strike being the wrong decision, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) replied: “I came away feeling like I learned some valuable information, yes.”

“The whole time I’ve been a senator, I’ve been gravely concerned about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and the threat it poses to Israel, Tehran, to the region. Your question is: do I feel safer [after the briefing]? We do not have a complete assessment yet of the impact of the strikes of last week, and when we do, I think that’ll answer a lot of currently unanswered questions,” Coons told reporters.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said that “the situation is evolving and what we know about it — the nature of the thing is what we’ll know about it is evolving,” adding that he plans to vote for the war powers resolution.

Multiple senators said that the administration appears to be focused on resuming diplomacy as its next step.

“The administration’s trying [to] engage, on a diplomatic level, and that would be the next step, is trying to have some kind of discussion with the Iranians about giving up their ability to enrich uranium,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said.

Graham expressed deep skepticism about the possibility of negotiations with Iran, though he said that now is probably the most ripe time for negotiations given Iran’s weakness.

“I talked to Rubio, I talked to the administration,” Graham said. “Try diplomacy, but if you don’t get a commitment up front that Iran, from this day forward, abandons its stated desire to wipe out Israel, if they’re not willing to recognize the Jewish state, you’re wasting your time.”

Warner, on the other hand, argued that diplomacy is the only path to ensure Iran cannot enrich uranium for military purposes, as inspectors will need to be sent into the country to verify that.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) said that “there’s a lot to [discuss]” about the war powers resolution and the potential timing for a vote on it — originally expected Thursday or Friday. “There’s just a lot to think about in that, and I’d have to hear from our colleagues about why, or when, to call that [up].”

Senators largely described the briefing as cordial and said the briefers had answered the questions posed to them.

Asked whether he was concerned that Hegseth and Rubio had provided political talking points or failed to address the substance of the issue, Kelly said that the two “did a good job. They answered our questions.”

But Murphy said he was “deeply worried about the politicization of intelligence.”