WASHINGTON — Sen. Chris Murphy said Saturday that Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers “was of the war’s chief cheerleaders,” that he has “consistently been one the Republican Party’s biggest Iran hawks,” and that “we wouldn’t be at war with Iran without Mike Rogers and people like him.”
Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, posted the line on X on Sept. 26. He quoted a CNN KFile package that set Rogers’s earlier interviews against a grocery-store ad in which the nominee says the war “needs to end and end quickly.”
Mike Rogers was of the war’s chief cheerleaders. He’s consistently been one the Republican Party’s biggest Iran hawks. In other words, we wouldn’t be at war with Iran without Mike Rogers and people like him.
Rogers served in the House from 2001 to 2015 and chaired the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2011 to 2015. He is not the current House Armed Services chairman of the same name, who represents Alabama. He holds no seat now and has cast no 2026 War Powers vote. In a 2007 National Review essay he cited a House Intelligence subcommittee report that Iran was “seeking nuclear weapons.” In July 2025 he told Jewish Insider, after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, “I couldn’t have supported [the operation] more” and “I was for all of this when it wasn’t very cool to be for all of this.”
Operation Epic Fury began Feb. 28. Rogers posted that day that Iran was “an imminent threat” that “must not have a nuclear weapon.” On CNN he later called the war “probably long overdue.” In a March Washington Reporter interview he said, “We were at war. Americans just didn’t know it.” In April he said the campaign had left Iran “toothless” and was “the best opportunity for peace in the Middle East I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.” In May, at Mackinac, he said it was “absolutely right” that Iran not get a nuclear weapon. In a June Detroit News Q&A he said the United States was “better off today than we were when it started.”
On CBS Detroit in late July he was asked whether the president should have congressional authority to continue. “I don’t mind giving the president authority to continue,” he said. “You can’t stop in mid-negotiation. … But I want him to wrap it up.” The Sept. 21 ad, posted from a grocery aisle, says groceries cost too much and “the war with Iran needs to end and end quickly.” He also called for a temporary embargo on U.S. diesel exports and a pause in federal and state gasoline taxes. At a press conference on the spot he said, “We’ve been pretty patient on this timeline. I think the best option now is to wind it down,” while other tools remain so Iran “can’t hurt their neighbors and can’t pursue a nuclear weapon.”
Murphy spoke on the Senate floor Sept. 24 before another War Powers vote, in a statement that blamed Senate Republicans for blocking an end to hostilities. He has opposed unauthorized force against Iran since at least 2019. The administration treats Epic Fury as a presidential use of force to keep Iran from a nuclear weapon. Murphy’s sentence that the war would not exist without Rogers is his inference. Rogers did not order the strikes and was not in Congress when they began.
Rogers faces Democrat Abdul El-Sayed on Nov. 3 in an open Michigan seat. El-Sayed called the ad a flip-flop after gasoline and diesel prices rose. President Donald Trump has endorsed Rogers. CNN’s Sept. 25 OutFront transcript is the compilation Murphy quoted. Connecticut votes the same day.