Far from “unconditional surrender” or the “total and complete victory” President Donald Trump claimed would result from his unilateral decision to launch a war against Iran, the protracted U.S. military action is reportedly winding down with a memorandum of understanding between U.S. and Iranian officials that includes lifting U.S. sanctions, unfreezing Iranian assets, ending the U.S. blockade, reopening the Strait of Hormuz with Iran still in control, creating a $300 billion reconstruction fund, and the promise of further negotiations to end Iran’s nuclear program. 

In other words, the provisional agreement to end the war that has cost $30 billion and 13 U.S. lives appears to more or less restore the status quo before the war started. The biggest achievement of the outlined deal is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which wasn’t closed until the U.S. started bombing. Details of a proposed effort to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon are still not figured out. Iran’s hardline regime is still in power.

None of this sounds like a win to Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who has repeatedly tried and failed to get her colleagues to pass a War Powers resolution to assert congressional warmaking authority, end the bombing and stop what she calls Trump’s illegitimate and “100% unnecessary” war.

“We have no assurances that war won’t continue, and no evidence that Americans are any better off today than they were before this all started,” Baldwin said in a press call Wednesday, calling the Iran war “a disaster for Wisconsinites.”

Baldwin is not alone. According to an April Marquette University Law School poll, 63% of Americans said there was not sufficient reason to start the war, and 68% said they disapproved of the way Trump has handled it.

Even Wisconsin’s Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, an ever-dependable Trump ally, told Bloomberg Television this week, “I don’t like the final outcome here. I’m sure President Trump doesn’t like the outcome. He would have liked unconditional surrender. It didn’t happen.” 

Johnson threw in a loopy tangent, blaming “gun control” for the inability of the Iranian people to overthrow their country’s brutal regime, calling it “a good lesson for the American people.” 

But Baldwin and Johnson appear to be mostly in agreement that, unproductive as it was, it’s better to wind down the war than to continue pushing forward with a costly and fruitless military adventure.  

“Look, peace is unequivocally a good thing, and something I have been fighting for since this president launched this unnecessary war,” Baldwin said Wednesday.

Speaking to Bloomberg on Tuesday, Johnson said: “If you’re going to recognize reality and realize that they still had a stranglehold over the straits and you want to open the straits up, there’s got to be some give and take.” 

So there it is: without knowing the details, Johnson supported Trump’s deal to end the war because it got Iran to reopen the strait it closed because Trump started the war in the first place. As for Iran’s nuclear program, “We can always go back in, the minute they make a move toward their nuclear sites, we can bomb them again,” Johnson asserted, echoing Trump.

“I don’t know what’s in the memorandum of understanding,” he added.

Being left in the dark about the details did not appear to trouble Johnson. Baldwin, in contrast, made it a point of her press conference, noting that Trump had repeatedly declared victory in Iran only to have the war continue.

“We need to make sure that whatever is in this agreement is real and also good for the American people,” she said, flagging the surge in gas prices that cost the average Wisconsin family $378 more since the war started as well as a huge hike in fertilizer prices that has taken a heavy toll on farmers.

The Iran nuclear deal Trump tore up, negotiated under the administration of President Barack Obama, included intrusive inspections that ensured Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity was not advancing, Baldwin noted. “I can’t see possibly how we could end up with a stronger deal curtailing Iran’s nuclear program 60 days from now than we did back in 2015 after months of multilateral negotiation,”  she said. “But again, Trump ripped up that deal, and we’re going to possibly, probably end up in a much worse place when we finally see this wind down and end.

Asked whether it still makes sense to push Congress to step up and pass a War Powers resolution, Baldwin answered, “absolutely.”

“When this president brought us into his war of choice, we weren’t under attack, we weren’t under any imminent threat of attack from Iran, he brought us into an illegal war.” Ever since then, Democrats have been introducing War Powers resolutions. 

“At first we had one Republican join us, then two, then three, then four. We are going to carry on until we are able to bring this to a close,” Baldwin said. 

Unlike Johnson, she was not reassured by Trump’s assertions that if the deal doesn’t work out, the U.S. can just start bombing again.

“I think it’s quite possible that some of my Republican colleagues who had previously joined us were taking the president’s word that a deal to end the war, an agreement to end the war, was upon us, and around the corner. I think they’ll soon find out that that’s not the case,” she said.

No matter how many conflicting assertions Trump makes about the war, it’s up to Congress to do its job. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Thursday rejected a proposal to rein in President Donald Trump’s months-long military actions in Iran that have left more than a dozen U.S. military members dead, while killing thousands of civilians and displacing millions in the Middle East, according to third-party monitors. 

The measure, known as the War Powers Resolution, is a tool for Congress to limit the president’s ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad. The resolution failed in a 212-212 vote. Most Democrats voted for the measure, though Jared Golden of Maine opposed it. Three Republicans also crossed party lines to vote in favor. They were Tom Barrett of Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey sponsored the measure, H.Con. Res. 75. 

During Wednesday’s debate on the House floor, Gottheimer said that Congress has still not been briefed on the progress or objectives in the Iran war, and argued it’s a violation of the U.S. Constitution. 

“Oversight is a key constitutional responsibility of Congress,” he said. 

Pentagon officials testified before Congress this week that the war so far has cost $29 billion, not including Iran’s drone and missile damage to U.S. military installations in the region.

Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued on the House floor that Iran was an “imminent threat.” He added that he was satisfied with the briefings from the Trump administration’s top military officials. 

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected an identical measure, its seventh vote on the matter. Three Republicans joined nearly all Democrats, a sign of growing dissatisfaction with the president’s own party amid the war. 

GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined Democrats. Sen. John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, joined Republicans. 

The Iran war started on Feb. 28 and so far, at least 13 U.S. military members have died. Human Rights Activists in Iran, a nongovernmental organization based in Fairfax, Virginia, estimated that at least 1,701 civilians, including 254 children have died because of the war. 

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated in late March that up to 3.2 million Iranians have been displaced due to the U.S. and Israel attack on Iran.