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The Republican-led Senate rejected a resolution Tuesday to block President Donald Trump from ordering further U.S. strikes on Iran days after the two countries reached a limited deal to end months of fighting and start broader negotiations.
The vote is a setback for Democrats' effort to force Trump to bring the unpopular conflict to a conclusion even as some Republicans have broken with their party and voted with Democrats.
The Senate narrowly voted to advance a similar war powers resolution last month, after four Republicans broke with their party and several others missed the vote. The House passed its own resolution this month seeking to force Trump to end the war.
But Tuesday's resolution from Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Georgia) failed 48-47 on a procedural vote.
Four Republicans - Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) - voted with Democrats for the resolution. All of them also voted to advance last month's resolution.
Democrats needed at least one more Republican to flip on Thursday to pass the resolution because one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), opposed it.
Five senators - Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) - missed the vote, but their absences weren't determinative.
If all of them had voted the way they have on previous resolutions, Tuesday's resolution would have failed 50-50.
The Senate can still take up the war powers resolution that advanced last month, which was introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia). The chamber would need to vote on the resolution at least two more times to pass it.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) indicated that he saw Tuesday's vote as a test as Democrats try to win over enough Senate Republicans to pass Kaine's resolution.
"We're trying to get a few more Republicans to vote for the Kaine resolution so we can move forward," Schumer told reporters. "We're one short right now."
Democrats have forced repeated votes on such resolutions in both chambers since the start of the conflict, slowly winning more GOP support.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 - the law Democrats used to force the vote - requires presidents to remove U.S. forces from any conflict that Congress has not authorized within 60 days. Trump hit the deadline May 1 but dodged it by arguing that hostilities had ended when a ceasefire took effect in April.
The hurdles to Congress barring Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran are high.
Both chambers would need to pass Kaine's resolution before it would reach Trump's desk. Trump would almost certainly veto it, forcing the Senate and the House to override his veto with a two-thirds vote in both chambers before the resolution could take effect. No war powers resolution has ever overcome a veto.
Democrats plan to continue to force votes on similar resolutions even as the U.S. and Iran prepare to sign a memorandum of understanding in Switzerland on Friday and start negotiations on a peace deal, warning that Trump could easily restart the war.
"I hope that we are seeing the beginning of the end of this war, but we've paid a huge cost and I'm not so sure what we're getting for that," Warnock said on the Senate floor. "But the question before this body is: Will this president do this again? "I think the answer is yes."
Republicans have praised Trump's efforts to end the war, even as some of them withheld judgment on the agreement the administration plans to sign on Friday because it has not been shared with them.
"I'm hoping that when get the information, more information about the memorandum of understanding, we'll have a better sense about what the path forward is," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said. "But I fully believe that the president and his team are moving in the right direction."
Cassidy joined Democrats in voting for a war powers resolution after he lost a primary in which Trump endorsed one of his challengers. But Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who lost a primary last month after Trump endorsed his opponent, did not use Tuesday's vote to defy the president, saying he did not want to restrict Trump's ability to strike Iran if necessary.
"The Democrats want to try to tie the president's hands," Cornyn said. "I don't want to tie his hands when it comes to dealing with the Iranian regime."
Kaine, who has spearheaded the Democrats' strategy of forcing war powers votes, said he did not want to call up his resolution for a vote until he was confident that it has enough Republican support to pass.
"I think the administration is having to work harder and harder and harder to avoid more folks from joining us," Kaine said in an interview after the vote. "I don't have a fifth, sixth or seventh Republican vote yet, but I am in conversation with some folks and think that it might not be too long till we get there."
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