GOP Rep. Turner: ‘Not a lot of options’ for Trump in Iran

Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, said Sunday the U.S. should continue to apply pressure on Iran so that it abandons its desire to seek a nuclear weapon, but conceded President Donald Trump has few options in a conflict and negotiations where “Iran has a vote,” he said.

Turner praised an allied declaration at the July summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that said Iran should never acquire a nuclear weapon, telling ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz that Iran posed a threat to the world.

A nuclear Iran “is not where the world wants to be,” Turner said. “The NATO summit validated certainly what the White House has been saying. This is certainly an important stake in the ground and it certainly is an inevitable conflict,” he said of the war.

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said the U.S. “should never have gotten into this senseless war, and we should end it now.”

Trump said at the outset of the war that the conflict would lead to regime change in Iran but the president quickly began instead to focus in public remarks on his goal to end what he calls Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

Van Hollen told Raddatz the U.S. should end the war it began in February, which has slowed maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to a crawl, roiled energy markets, and left U.S. service members vulnerable to Iranian attacks.

Four American service members were killed in action in the conflict in the past week.

“When you’re digging a hole, you just stop digging, and my view is that’s what we should do,” Van Hollen said.

“I think the Strait of Hormuz would then reopen” if the U.S. were to cease its offensive, the senator said.

Raddatz asked what the consequences might be if the U.S. were to simply “walk away” from the war.

“There’s no question that Iran would go back to the status quo ante before the war started,” he said. “I believe that, and that would show just how senseless this war is.”

The U.S. military has not reported any strikes in Iran in either of the last two nights after publicizing attacks for nearly two consecutive weeks.

Bringing the war to an end “certainly is a difficult process,” Turner said, acknowledging “bipartisan frustration on Capitol Hill … with how this war is being … prosecuted.”

Turner, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the administration was continuing its military approach while pursuing diplomacy but that Iran’s commitments were not reliable.

“They cannot be negotiated with and then be relied upon,” he said. “And in that, it’s very difficult.”

“Now we’re in this situation where the administration … doesn’t have a whole lot of options,” Turner said.

Van Hollen said he was “glad” with Trump’s decision to hold off on a military escalation in the conflict as the New York Times reported.

Escalation “would just drag us more deeply into this conflict, a conflict that we should be getting out of, not getting deeper into,” he said.

Turner doubted the credibility of the report.

The congressman said the U.S. could not simply abandon its effort as called for by Van Hollen, who said he believes that would reopen the strait.

“That’s a foolish trade … to say, ‘Well, we’ll have the [strait] open, we’ll have lower gas prices, but we’ll have a nuclear Iran,'” Turner said, holding that Tehran maintains nuclear aspirations.

The Pentagon is seeking $67 billion in supplemental funding on top of its record $1.5 trillion budget request to Congress, citing among other needs the conflict in Iran, which has strained U.S. munitions stockpiles.

“We have depleted our interceptors, which are the weapons we use to intercept incoming Iranian attacks, which are obviously necessary to protect American troops,” Van Hollen said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called a shortage of interceptors a “manufactured story” and told the Senate Appropriations Committee last week that the Biden administration had depleted stockpiles with aid to Ukraine that and had not replaced them.

Van Hollen said he will “not vote for one more penny for this senseless war.”

“My view is just end it right now,” he said.