WASHINGTON—Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Sunday released the following statement on President Trump’s illegal ordering of strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran without congressional authorization:

“Donald Trump, a weak and dangerously reckless president, has put the United States on a path to a war in the Middle East that the country does not want, the law does not allow, and our security does not demand.

“Our president knows nothing about history. And history tells us that the United States' hubris about the efficacy of military action in the Middle East is almost universally wrong. Trump has been goaded into these strikes by the perpetual cheerleaders of war in the Middle East - the people who know how to start conflicts there but never know how to end them, and the people who profit - politically and financially - from endless war.

“I've been briefed on the intelligence - there is no evidence Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States. That makes this attack illegal. Only Congress can declare preemptive war, and we should vote as soon as possible on legislation to explicitly deny President Trump the authorization to drag us into a conflict in Middle East that could get countless Americans killed and waste trillions of dollars. All my thoughts tonight are for the safety of our personnel in the region.”

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