United States Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz pushed back Sunday when “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker questioned if the United States was at war with Iran.
President Donald Trump announced the United States military and Israel Defense Forces launched strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regime in a video posted to Truth Social early Feb. 28. Welker questioned Waltz about whether Trump started a war.
“As you know, words matter. Does the Trump administration — do you — describe this as a war against Iran?” Welker asked. Waltz responded, “Well, I describe it as Iran’s been at war with us, as I just said, and thankfully—”
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“So, it’s a war? It is a war?” Welker asked.
Waltz fired back, “President Trump is ending it. Look, I’ll leave it to the lawyers and those who deal with Congress in terms of the War Powers Act, which every administration has viewed as unconstitutional. That said, Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio has been there day after day and week after week in the recent months to appropriately brief congressional leaders.”
Efforts by Democrats to halt American military operations against the Iranian regime were defeated in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“But I’ll tell you, you know, who does believe that they’re being attacked? It’s the soldiers that have been buried for many, many years as a result of Iranian attacks and their proxy attacks — Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and others, in Beirut in 1983 and Iraq through those years — over 600 American soldiers, so, I mean, we have to take a step back, Kristen, and look at how many billions, how much time, how much treasure that administration after administration has spent dealing with this,” Waltz said.
Six American service members were killed March 1, when an Iranian strike hit a technical operations center in Kuwait.
The first Trump administration killed Qasem Soleimani, a notorious commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, in a January 2020 strike. Soleimani was a crucial figure in providing advanced improvised explosive device components that were used against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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