Turner urges pressure on Iran as Trump weighs next move

Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday the United States should keep pressing Iran until it abandons any pursuit of a nuclear weapon, while conceding that President Donald Trump has only a narrow set of moves left. Speaking on ABC News’ This Week with Margaret Brennan, the Ohio Republican said Trump faces hard limits because, as Turner put it, “Iran has a vote.”

Turner, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, has long argued that Iran can never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. He has also said Trump is carrying forward the maximum-pressure campaign he started in his first term, a line that fits the Trump team’s choice set but also exposes its constraints: more sanctions and political pressure can squeeze Tehran, yet they may not stop its nuclear calculations on their own.

The underlying policy menu remains stark. Trump can escalate militarily, widen economic pressure, pursue diplomacy, or try some combination of all three, but each path carries a cost. Military action risks widening the conflict and pulling the United States deeper into a confrontation that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have treated with growing alarm. Diplomacy could limit the risk of war, but any agreement would depend on Iranian concessions and Trump’s willingness to trade pressure for verification and restraint. Sanctions and other pressure tactics preserve leverage, but they also leave open the question of whether coercion alone can change Tehran’s behavior.

A Congressional Research Service update dated May 22, 2025 said U.S. and Iranian diplomats were engaged in the first diplomatic talks in years over Iran’s nuclear program after Iran suffered significant military and strategic setbacks in 2024, largely at the hands of Israel and the United States. The report said the balance between Washington and Tehran had shifted over the prior year, making the stakes of any Trump decision especially high.

Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who appeared in the same ABC segment, warned that escalation would only drag the United States deeper into conflict. That fight reached Capitol Hill as lawmakers pressed for more information on Trump’s Iran policy and military campaign, and later the Senate voted 46-51 to defeat a motion to discharge a war-powers resolution aimed at halting military operations against Iran. The vote underscored how Congress has become a central check in a debate that now turns less on rhetoric than on how much room Trump actually has to move.