Members of Massachusetts’ all-Democratic congressional delegation have quickly denounced President Trump’s decision to attack Iran, and even some local Republicans are expressing unease.
“America is exhausted of foreign entanglement. I’m exhausted,” said John Deaton, a Marine veteran and Republican challenging Democratic Sen. Ed Markey for Senate.
While Deaton called Iran “one of the most evil regimes in world history,” he said the president needs to do a better job explaining the justification for war. By lighting the fuse on a dangerous military adventure, Deaton said, Trump runs the risk of alienating some of his core supporters.
“One of the reasons President Trump was elected was the promise that we would not become entangled in prolonged foreign wars,” Deaton told WBUR.
Republican Senate candidate John Deaton stands at a podium before a debate when he ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2024. (Meredith Nierman/Pool Photo via AP)
Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Republican Party is backing the war. A statement from the MassGOP said it stands “firmly in support of President Trump and the effort to defend Americans and U.S. interests around the world against the brutal Khamenei regime,” referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who was killed in an airstrike over the weekend.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, called the strikes “dangerous and illegal.” In a statement, the state’s senior senator wrote, “‘America first’ doesn’t mean dragging the United States into another forever war built on lies while ignoring the needs of Americans here at home.”
Markey, speaking Sunday in Somerville, called the the strikes “an unnecessary and illegal war of choice.”
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey during an event in May 2025. (Brett Phelps/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Markey said Trump’s justification for the war — that the Iranian regime is dangerously close to developing nuclear weapons that could threaten the U.S. and its allies — is untrue. He said it’s now up to Congress to approve a war powers resolution to reign in a president risking a war that could engulf the entire Middle East.
“Trump must make his case to the Congress, and every member of the Senate and the House must be put on record now,” Markey said.
A similar message came from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who’s running against Markey for the Senate. Moulton, a Marine veteran, said he was sent to war in Iraq on the basis of lies about weapons of mass destruction.
“Once again, we don’t have a clear explanation for why we’re going to war; why we’re asking young Americans to risk their lives and lose their lives,” Moulton said Monday on WBUR’s Morning Edition.
Amid reports of the first American casualties, Moulton, like Markey, said it’s now up to Congress to try to restrain the president. Lawmakers in Washington are gearing up to vote on a war powers resolution this week. Most Democrats are expected to support it, but too few Republicans appear ready to defy Trump, according to Moulton.
“We need to have Republicans do their constitutional duty, as well,” Moulton said.
U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton speaks during a House Subcommittee on July 23, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Some local Republicans are giving Trump credit for taking action. Micah Jones, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, is running for Congress in the 6th district, the seat now occupied Moulton.
“I do think the administration has provided rationale for why it was important to do a strike at this time,” Jones said in an interview.
6th District congressional candidate Micah Q. Jones. (Photo courtesy Jones campaign)
Jones said he believes U.S. efforts to persuade Iran to renounce its nuclear ambitions had failed, and that Iran’s long record of threatening the U.S. and its allies across the region justified going to war.
“The Iranian regime was a terrible force in the world,” according to Jones. He said he saw first-hand evidence of that during his Army deployment in Afghanistan, where the Iranian regime funded organizations like the Haqqani network and the Taliban. “American troops were losing their lives because of that,” he said.
Despite his overall support for the war against Iran, Jones noted that the war in Afghanistan lasted more than 20 years, and that causes him to worry about how long this one will last — and and what will come next.
“The day after is a genuine concern,” he said.
This segment aired on March 2, 2026.
