House Democrats split sharply on Middle East policy Thursday, joining Republicans to kill a war powers resolution that would have forced President Trump to withdraw all U.S. armed forces from Lebanon within a week.
The chamber voted 92 to 324 against the measure introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Among Democrats, the division was stark: 117 voted no while 91 backed the resolution. Only one Republican supported it.
The defeat marks a stinging setback for the anti-war wing of the Democratic caucus, coming just 24 hours after the chamber passed a similar constraint on Trump's Iran military authority. That Iran resolution succeeded after months of intensive work by Democratic leadership to secure buy-in from the party's most staunchly pro-Israel members and a handful of Republicans.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team actively opposed Tlaib's Lebanon resolution ahead of the vote. In a statement, they argued that "there are no U.S. service-members involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon," setting a factual marker around which their opposition hinged.
The Democratic leaders signaled they would support an alternative resolution instead, one designed to preserve U.S. coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces as those forces combat Hezbollah. "We stand with the Lebanese people, the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces in their efforts to live peacefully and defeat Hezbollah," they said.
The back-to-back votes expose fault lines within the Democratic Party on foreign policy that the Iran resolution briefly masked. Progressive and centrist Democrats maintain deeply different instincts on U.S. military commitments in the Middle East, even as they managed unified messaging on constraining Trump's ability to escalate with Tehran.
Author James Rodriguez: "The Democrats showed they can unite on Iran but fracture on Lebanon, revealing where their Middle East priorities truly lie."
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