Senator Briefed on Trump’s Iran War Plans Warns of “Devastating Escalation”

A senator who was briefed on President Donald Trump’s plans to launch intense strikes on Iran after the midterm elections has warned that the attacks are slated to be so horrific that they will lead to the “destruction” of the U.S.’s “commitment to the rule of law.”

At an event hosted by the Middle East Institute on Wednesday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that he was recently in a “fairly detailed” briefing with Pentagon officials about the war plan.

“I will just say this: Their plan … will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law,” Murphy said.

“The plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolonged escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests,” he went on, adding that it would also put the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk when Iran retaliates.

Murphy said that he couldn’t share details of the plan, but, when asked to elaborate, he pointed to recent reporting on the campaigns that the Pentagon has drawn up on behalf of President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. has informed Gulf countries that it is prepared for a “short, intense military campaign” after the election next week. The Pentagon has created plans to strike a wide variety of targets, reports have said, including Iran’s nuclear energy facilities.

Trump has reportedly explicitly ordered the military to target a large amount of energy infrastructure — largely considered to be civilian in nature. One plan prepared by the military, CNN reported, is for the U.S. to drop the “Mother of All Bombs,” the largest conventional weapon by weight in existence, a 21,000-pound bomb with the ability to destroy everything within its massive blast radius.

The plans, if carried out, may “use tactics that are even more provocative and dangerous, and potentially violative of international law,” Murphy said — worsening tactics that the senator acknowledged have already violated the international war guardrails.

“Every first year law student could tell you that this war is illegal” in the domestic sense, Murphy said. “But it is also clearly in contravention of international law and commitments that we have made to the rule of law to deliberately target civilians and to use the harm or potential harm of civilians as leverage in war.”

Murphy’s comments suggest that Trump is slated to go even further in the illegal war that has already had devastating consequences for Iran’s civilians and economy.

According to an analysis by the National Iranian American Council, U.S.-Israeli strikes have already destroyed or damaged nearly 1,300 schools, 80 energy facilities, and scores of transportation facilities and sites like airports and bridges. The harsh sanctions regime has also ravaged the economy, with over 1 million jobs lost and massive inflation for basic goods like food, even as the value of the rial hits record lows.

The opening strikes of this war also involved the U.S. bombing an elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing over 160 people, including 123 children under 13 years old.

Trump and his cabinet have repeatedly stoked concerns that they may commit even more heinous war crimes against civilians with the president’s repeated genocidal threats to “annihilate” Iran. In his speech to the UN general assembly last month, Trump mused about whether he should “drive [Iran] into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations.”

Adding to concerns of the administration’s wanton disregard for military procedures and briefings to Congress is the Pentagon’s secrecy regarding its ever-shifting operations.

Murphy noted that, on top of never having sought congressional approval for the war, Pentagon officials have been guarded in private briefings about the war. He said that he gets the sense that, internally, Pentagon officials believe more strikes won’t be effective in achieving the U.S.’s goals — as previous reports have said — but that they have become more reluctant to voice their disagreements with the military’s top brass under Hegseth when speaking with Congress.

Indeed, on Wednesday, Hegseth fired the military’s top planner just days before strikes could potentially restart. The Pentagon said Hegseth fired Brett Sylvia, the head of strategy, plans, and policy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accusing him of leaking information about Iran and Russia to journalists without providing evidence.

This is the latest high-level firing by Hegseth, who has also ousted several generals because of reported personal disagreements over how the military should be run.