Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said the Trump administration has limited choices left in the war with Iran and called on U.S. allies to shoulder more of the economic pressure campaign against Tehran, even as he declined to defend the administration’s earlier declarations that Iran’s military had been destroyed.
“Our allies and those in which they sell energy to are going to have to step up to the plate here,” Turner told Martha Raddatz, according to the official ABC News transcript of the July 26 episode of This Week. “America, the United States cannot do this alone. There is economic pressure that can be placed on Iran.”
Turner, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform according to his official House committee assignments, made the comments after Raddatz noted that Trump had reportedly backed off plans for a major escalation against Iran and asked whether the administration had a clear strategy going forward. “Now, we have to go to the point where Iran, their whole ability to be able to attack their neighbors, to be a sponsor of terrorism, is because they are in the world of commerce, the world of energy,” Turner said, adding that the administration “doesn’t have a whole lot of options” and is “using force and is using also the attempt for negotiation.”
Turner pointed to the joint declaration issued at the NATO summit in Ankara on July 8 as validation of the administration’s core objective. “The most important aspect here has been the goal of this conflict, and that is certainly one of the things that was subscribed in the declaration in the NATO Summit, that was a win in this administration, and that where all of the NATO allies agreed with the administration, and that is that Iran cannot be permitted to have a nuclear weapon,” Turner said. The official NATO declaration states that “Allies reiterate that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon and call on Iran to fully respect freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Pressed by Raddatz on why the war continues given Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s earlier statements that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “obliterated” and “decimated,” Turner declined to defend the specific language. “I’m certainly not going to defend the administration’s statements throughout this. You’ll have to talk to the administration about them,” Turner said. “What they had said was that the actions that they had taken at their nuclear enrichment sites had been obliterated, certainly not their aspirations for nuclear weapons or the nuclear weapons program.”
Turner argued that ending the war to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as Sen. Chris Van Hollen had urged earlier in the broadcast, would trade short-term relief for a longer-term danger. “The foolish trade is to say, ‘Well, we’ll have the straits open, and we’ll have lower gas prices, but we’ll have a nuclear Iran,'” Turner said. “That is not where the world wants to be.”
Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations committees, had told Raddatz the war should end immediately regardless of Iran’s behavior. “When you’re digging a hole, you just stop digging,” Van Hollen said. “There was no clear objective from this war from the beginning. This was a war started by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.” Van Hollen said he would “not vote for one more penny for this senseless war.”
Turner acknowledged bipartisan frustration in Congress over how the administration has conducted and described the war. “There’s certainly an issue where there’s bipartisan frustration on Capitol Hill,” Turner said. “Republicans, Democrats that are showing their frustration with how this war is being prosecuted, the statements that are being made by the White House, at the Pentagon. I don’t think anybody is going to defend those particular statements or those particular decisions.”
Turner also defended the collapsed June memorandum of understanding as having been a good-faith effort undermined by Iran. “In that memorandum of understanding, Iran made statements that said that they would never make,” Turner said. “They said they would not pursue a nuclear weapon. They said the straits would be open. And then they did not live up to them.”
Raddatz noted that 18 U.S. service members have been killed since the war began and that a recent Washington Post/Ipsos poll found only 29 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the conflict, with 69 percent disapproving. Turner did not dispute the war’s unpopularity. “No one is fond of any war,” Turner said.
Turner’s rejected the idea of ending the war simply to reopen the strait as a “foolish trade” for risking a nuclear-armed Iran.
Neither the White House nor Trump has issued a direct public response to Turner’s remarks beyond the administration’s existing public statements on the war.