Pa. Sens. Fetterman, McCormick support attack on Iran, but Reps. Lee, Deluzio question Trump's authority

The Pittsburgh region’s congressional delegation shared mixed views after President Donald Trump announced U.S. airstrikes against three Iranian targets thought to be part of Iran’s nuclear program.

Both of Pennsylvania’s senators, John Fetterman, D-Braddock, and Dave McCormick, R-Squirrel Hill, and one of its Republican congressmen, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, voiced their support.

Meantime, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, opposed the moves, and Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Fox Chapel, said Trump lacked the authority to carry out attacks without congressional approval.

Trump announced the strikes Saturday evening in a post on Truth Social, his social media site.

Fetterman posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he supported the president.

“Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and cannot have nuclear capabilities,” Fetterman wrote on X. “I’m grateful for and salute the finest military in the world.”

Fetterman previously suggested the U.S. use force over diplomacy in an April interview with the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative media outlet.

“You’re never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing the region for decades already, and now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that, to strike and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities,” he said April 23.

McCormick, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, said the attacks were the result of Iran’s failure to respond to good-faith efforts by Trump to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear program.

“I applaud President Trump’s strong leadership and his continued commitment to peace through strength. Once again, America’s detractors around the world should know President Trump means what he says,” McCormick said. “This is an important step toward ensuring that the world’s largest state sponsor of terror never obtains a nuclear weapon.”

“A nuclear Iran was a direct threat to our national security and our allies in the region,” Reschenthaler wrote on X. “Iran is responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of our service members.”

Lee viewed things differently.

“Trump is acting fully outside of his authority and is once again trampling on the Constitution,” she wrote in an X post. “This is an illegal and terrifying escalation. Dropping bombs on Iran brings us closer to war, not peace, and he is putting millions of lives at stake.”

“Congress did not authorize this war,” U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Fox Chapel, wrote on X.

Earlier in the week, he cautioned against Trump taking this course.

“The American people, through their elected representatives in Congress, decide whether we send Americans into the hell of war,” Deluzio said.

A veteran of the war in Iraq, Deluzio alluded to what proved to be faulty U.S. intelligence that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and said “never again” when it comes to the similar situation in Iran.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy organization, also invoked past U.S. missteps in Iraq as it condemned the attacks in Iran.

“President Trump has attacked Iran based on the same type of false information put forward by those who consistently seek to drag our nation into unnecessary and catastrophic wars,” Nihad Awad, the council’s executive director, wrote in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, was silent on social media Saturday night.