US lawmakers condemn Trump over Iran strikes: ‘acts of war unauthorized by Congress’

Members of Congress swiftly denounced the president’s military action against the Islamic Republic alongside Israel

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Donald Trump’s failure to build a case with the US public for striking Iran and then going ahead apparently without even alerting Congress’s key national security experts – the so-called “gang of eight” – has fuelled fierce domestic criticism of the military action against the Islamic Republic on Saturday.

Belying the gravity of Saturday’s attacks, the president spent just three minutes of Tuesday’s State of the Union address trying to explain why the need to act against a regime that had been a strategic foe for decades had suddenly become so urgent and whose nuclear facilities he claimed to have “obliterated” in previous strikes last June.