Senior Democrats have claimed they were left in the dark about operation Midnight Hammer, the US’s highly coordinated strike on Saturday on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.
Neither Mark Warner, a US senator of Virginia, nor Jim Himes, a representative of Connecticut, both top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence panels, were briefed before the attack, according to reports.
But that came amid claims that Republican counterparts were given advance notice of the operation, which involved 125 aircraft – including seven B-2 bombers carrying 14 bunker busters weighing three tons – and 75 Tomahawk missiles launched from US submarines. Axios reported that the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, had been informed shortly before the attacks began at 6.40pm eastern time.
Himes’s committee staff received notification about the strike from the Pentagon only after Donald Trump made the announcement on social media soon before 8pm, according to the outlet.
Related: Global alarm at US strikes on Iran amid fears conflict could spiral out of control
The president’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, told a press conference early on Sunday that the strikes “took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the president called”.
“It took misdirection and the highest of operational security,” Hegseth said, in part alluding to the US’s deployment of B-2 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam earlier on Saturday.
The US attack of Iran came as most Democrats had left Washington for the Juneteenth holiday – but the apparent lack of forewarning to lawmakers on intelligence committees is striking. Top lawmakers are typically informed of military operations in advance.
“Cost, duration, risk to our troops, strategy – the basics before we make a decision of this consequence,” said Chris Coons, a senior Democratic member of the Senate foreign relations committee, last week.
Arizona senator Mark Kelly told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that the White House should have been “right up front” in coming to Congress “and asking for authorization to do this”.
“That’s the constitutional approach to this,” Kelly said. “He could have talked to us about what the goal is and what the plan is ahead of time.”
Tim Kaine, a Virginia senator who sits on the armed services as well as the foreign relations committees, said Congress needed to be informed ahead of time.
“Congress needs to authorize a war against Iran,” he said. “This Trump war against Iran – we have not.”
Senators are expected to receive a briefing on the strikes next week. But the signs that an attack was imminent were there to see: additional US military assets had been moved into the region, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had postponed a briefing with the Senate intelligence committee last week.
Moderate and progressive Democrats have been in conflict over the engagement of US forces in support of Israel. Trump’s use of force could now deepen the ideological schism.
Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told CNN on Sunday that “the destruction of these facilities is a positive in the sense that it will set back Iran’s program”. But he warned that Iran could now “sprint for a bomb”.
He added that the strikes were “not constitutional” and Congress should be brought in “on an action this substantial that could lead to a major outbreak of war”. But Schiff refused to be drawn in on whether the world was safer following the strike. “We simply don’t know,” he said.
Schiff maintained that in absence of a briefing “this is an order that should not have been given”.
Prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations have been notably silent on the 10-day war between Israel and Iran. “They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration.
“The beasts of the Democratic party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”
But some had spoken out. Ro Khanna, a California congressman, called the White House threats of an attack on Iran “a defining moment for our party”. That came as progressive and isolationist lawmakers on the right found themselves uncomfortably aligned.
Khanna had introduced legislation with the Kentucky Republican US House member Thomas Massie that called on Trump to “terminate” the use of US armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.
Following the strike, Khanna posted on X: “Trump struck Iran without any authorization of Congress.”
Khanna said Congress needed to “immediately return” to Washington to vote on the measure he and Massie co-authored. Kaine said he would bring a similar resolution to the Senate in the coming days.
Massie said in response to the strikes: “This is not Constitutional.”
The independent US senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, said supporting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin “Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake”. He introduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran.
The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on X that the decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites was “disastrous”.
“The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
Halie Soifer, the chief executive officer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement: “This is an incredibly difficult moment for the vast majority of American Jews, who are supportive of Israel, concerned about the security and safety of the Israeli people and Jews in the United States and around the world, and fearful that president Trump lacks a clear strategy about what happens next with Iran.”
On NBC’s Meet the Press JD Vance, the US vice-president, maintained that it was untrue to say that Saturday’s strikes in Iran exceeded Trump’s presidential authority.
Schiff, meanwhile, declined to support calls for impeachment proceedings against Trump, saying the failure to brief Democrats ahead of the strike was “another partisan exercise”.
