As long as troops are fighting in the Middle East, Alaska US Sen. Dan Sullivan said he won’t be voting to limit President Donald Trump’s war with Iran.
The embattled Republican made the comments following last week’s vote on a resolution to block the president from making additional strikes on Iran, which according to the New York Times was the 14th time the Senate has voted on such a measure. Sulivan’s commitment to the war is particularly notable because it comes at a time that other vulnerable Republicans are starting to break from the president.
With fuel prices spiking—this time to historic highs for diesel, with a gallon going for an average of $6.69 in Alaska—more Republicans are joining ranks with Alaska US Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate who has been voting with Democrats to limit Trump’s war with Iran since May.
But despite growing concerns among Republicans about the fallout of high gas prices, missile shortages, a higher-than-disclosed death toll and the overall lack of progress, Sullivan has a simpler view of things.
As long as troops are fighting with Iran, he won’t vote to end the fighting with Iran.
“A war powers vote is about removing American forces from a region,” Sullivan told reporters after the vote, according to the Washington Post. “And when there are troops in contact, I don’t believe in doing that.”
That’s been the line that Sullivan, a former officer in the US Marines, has stuck to throughout the Iran war, essentially arguing that given the complex and fast-moving nature of military conflicts, it’d be wrong for Congress to rein in Trump’s Department of War.
“We’ve got troops in combat,” said Sullivan earlier this year. “We’ve got what I’m calling a freedom of navigation operation going on right now, which is dangerous.”
It’s a justification that his Democratic opponent, Mary Peltola, says is just an excuse for Congress to not do its job. If Sullivan won’t vote to limit a conflict once it’s started, it’s essentially giving a president free rein to start and continue wars without Congressional oversight.
“Our system was designed for a balance of powers,” she said at a campaign event in May. “Clearly, there is not a balance of power right now. Clearly this administration has an outsized role in the direction, whether it’s tariffs or wars. We have got to have a Congress that doesn’t just cede all of their power.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
