Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) issued a sharp public rebuke of President Donald Trump on Thursday morning, declaring that the ongoing U.S. conflict with Iran must be brought to an immediate and permanent end — just hours after American forces launched a fresh wave of airstrikes against Iranian targets and Trump threatened to escalate further. The senator’s statement landed as a fragile ceasefire teetered on the edge of collapse, oil markets lurched upward, and Iranian retaliatory strikes struck across multiple U.S.-allied Gulf nations, raising alarm across the region and in Washington.
“One thing is clear: it’s time to end this disastrous war NOW,” Van Hollen wrote on X at 8:34 AM on July 9, 2026, linking to an Associated Press report detailing the overnight military escalation. “Instead, in the past 24 hours, Trump ordered more strikes & threatened to ‘finish the job,’ endangering efforts to end the war for good. It’s time to stop this war permanently, not restart it.”
New U.S. Strikes Rock the Persian Gulf
The strikes Van Hollen condemned unfolded in the early hours of Thursday, when the United States launched military attacks against a range of Iranian military sites and port facilities. According to the Associated Press, the attacks appeared larger in scale than previous rounds of fighting, with air raid sirens sounding at least twice in Bahrain — home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters. Kuwait’s military announced it was actively intercepting incoming drones and missiles, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed it had carried out attacks on both Bahrain and Kuwait. There was no immediate word on casualties or damage in the three Gulf Arab nations struck.
Iranian state media reported explosions in multiple locations, including Bushehr, home to Iran’s nuclear power plant complex, and the southern port cities of Chabahar, Konarak, Bandar Abbas, and Sirik. In Iranshahr, authorities confirmed a strike killed a firefighter at an airport. U.S. military officials said in a statement that the latest strikes were intended to further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz — the critical waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passed before the war began on February 28 with coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes.
Trump Threatens to ‘Finish the Job’
The strikes came after Trump declared that recent Iranian attacks on merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz had effectively ended the fragile ceasefire. After departing a NATO summit in Turkey, Trump posted videos on his social media platform of what he described as explosions inside Iran, warning Tehran that further aggression would be met with greater force.
“This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!” Trump wrote. He had earlier suggested the situation would not lead to “long-term” military action, saying “anything that happens is going to happen very fast” — but then added that the U.S. military might “just finish the job.” Trump also renewed threats to target Iranian civilian infrastructure, including electric plants and desalination facilities, and repeated past warnings about potentially seizing Kharg Island, through which approximately 90% of Iranian oil exports flow.
When asked directly about the ceasefire’s status, Trump was blunt. “For me, I think it’s over,” he said, though he allowed that U.S. negotiators could continue talks. “They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time,” he added. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi fired back on X, saying Trump’s remarks were “not a sign of power but an admission of the failure” of U.S. policy toward Iran.
Van Hollen’s Long-Running Opposition to the War
Thursday’s statement from Van Hollen was the latest in a sustained campaign the Maryland Democrat has waged against the Iran conflict since its inception. When the Trump administration launched its initial strikes on February 28, Van Hollen was among the first Senate voices to condemn the action in stark terms. “Trump is lying to the American people as he launches an illegal, regime-change war against Iran,” Van Hollen said at the time. “This is endangering American lives and has already resulted in mass civilian casualties. This is not making us safer and only damages the U.S. and our interests.”
Van Hollen also participated in a closed-door congressional briefing on the war early in the conflict, emerging deeply unsatisfied with what administration officials had to say. After the briefing, Van Hollen stated that even in classified sessions, officials were unable to provide a coherent explanation of events, saying there was no clear strategy and no defined end goal — and that the war would not make the United States safer.
War Powers Push and Senate Floor Action
Van Hollen’s criticism has not been confined to social media or press statements. In April 2026, he joined a wave of Democratic senators in filing War Powers resolutions designed to force a Senate floor vote to end the conflict. Van Hollen said at the time that “Trump promised to keep America out of foreign wars and work to bring prices down, but he has done just the opposite by launching an illegal war of choice with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Iran,” arguing the conflict had left 13 U.S. service members dead, hundreds injured, thousands of civilians killed, and cost the American people “billions of taxpayer dollars per day” while driving up prices across the board.
Most recently, on June 23, Van Hollen took to the Senate floor to speak in favor of a war powers resolution specifically aimed at blocking Trump from using U.S. armed forces in hostilities against Iran without congressional authorization. The resolution sought to permanently end what Van Hollen described as Trump’s illegal Iran war and to reassert Congress’s constitutional role in matters of war and peace.
A ‘Big Setback,’ But Peace Still the Only Option
Even as a tentative interim deal briefly offered hope of a path out of the conflict, Van Hollen made clear he viewed the entire episode as a damning indictment of the administration’s foreign policy. Speaking on CNN, Van Hollen said the situation represented a “big setback for the United States of America,” while still urging that the deal move forward — because without it, he argued, the country would be in an even worse position. “We’ve lost 14 American servicemembers, hundreds wounded, thousands of civilians killed, oil and gas prices up and up, other prices up and up,” he said. “And at the end of the day, we’re actually worse off.”
“It is just very clear proof that we should never have started this stupid, illegal war in the beginning,” Van Hollen said.
Ceasefire Under Severe Strain
The backdrop to Van Hollen’s Thursday statement was a Gulf region that had once again lurched toward open warfare. The temporary ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran had already weathered repeated shocks from both sides, but Thursday’s round of fighting — involving strikes on three Gulf nations allied with the United States — represented a significant widening of the conflict’s footprint. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a key negotiator in ongoing peace talks, made Tehran’s posture plain in a post on X: “America still hasn’t learned that bullying and breaking promises are no longer cost-free. Let me put it plainly: if you strike, you’ll get hit.”
Negotiations toward a permanent deal had been expected to begin following the funeral of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the war’s opening moments on February 28. That funeral was supposed to mark a period of reduced tensions and provide a launchpad for talks on the most difficult remaining issues, including fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz and rolling back Iran’s contested nuclear program. Instead, the fresh round of strikes and Trump’s declaration that the ceasefire is “over” cast serious doubt on whether those talks would proceed at all. Oil prices rose sharply on the news.
Broader Democratic Chorus
Van Hollen has framed the war in stark terms since before the ceasefire was even reached, writing that the conflict with Iran “has been a disaster from the start” and that the relevant question is no longer whether any deal is perfect — but whether continuing the war would make things better. On Thursday, with new strikes underway and Trump floating the idea of a decisive military endgame, Van Hollen’s message was the same as it had been since February: the path forward runs through diplomacy and an end to hostilities, not through escalation. Whether the administration or his Republican colleagues in the Senate will agree remains, as of Thursday morning, very much an open question.