Top Republican Calls Out Trump Administration for Keeping Congress in the Dark on Iran

A top Republican congressman aired his grievances with the Trump administration publicly on Wednesday, chastising the Pentagon for failing to give lawmakers adequate information about its plans for the war with Iran.

The criticism from Rep. Mike Rogers, a reliable defense hawk, is the clearest sign yet of a growing rift between congressional Republicans and the White House over the conflict, which has reached its third week.

“We want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered,” Rogers told reporters on Capitol Hill. “And we’re just not getting enough answers on those questions.”

Rogers, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee and has consistently supported President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran, said on Wednesday that he was simply trying to get a clearer picture of the administration’s next steps.

“We just wanted them to tell us what’s the plan, and we didn’t get any answers,” he said. “I understand they can’t give us, they shouldn’t give us, specific operational details. But generally, we should be able to get more texture than we’re receiving from them.”

Rogers also signaled that Republicans could seek to exercise more control over the conflict if the administration’s stonewalling continued: “I conveyed to them at the end of this hearing, this has consequences if you don’t remedy it,” he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, House and Senate defense leadership met for their weekly closed-door briefing on the war efforts with Iran.

“Let me put it this way: I can see why he might have said that,” Sen. Roger Wicker, who leads the upper chamber’s Armed Services Committee, told reporters when asked about Rogers’ comments.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace also left the meeting with more concerns than confidence. In a post to X, she said she “will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing.”

“The justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today in the House Armed Services Committee,” she said in a second X post. “This gap is deeply troubling. The longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of Congress and the American people.”

The White House said Wednesday that it is engaged in “productive talks” with Iranian leaders, even as those leaders call the administration’s demands “excessive,” and say they have put forward a counterproposal.

The exact details of Trump’s negotiations with Iran are not clear. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the president had sent Iranian leaders a list of 15 demands, including the dismantlement of the country’s ballistic-missile and nuclear programs, as well as the opening of maritime trade routes.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, at a briefing on Wednesday, said that reports on the U.S. ceasefire plan were “not entirely factual” and only contained “elements of truth.”

On Tuesday, at least 1,000 troops from the Army’s combat-ready 82nd Airborne Division were deployed to assist with war efforts in the Middle East. Their mobilization came days after reports of 2,000 Marines being sent to the region aboard three US Navy assault vessels.