'Break their will' Republicans want Trump to fight Iran, not make deal

As signals mounted early Thursday that President Trump planned to escalate with Iran, two congressional Republicans urged him to abandon what they said are fruitless negotiations with the Islamic Republic.

While saying they wanted to see the war with Iran end, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told the audience at the Center for a New American Security’s annual conference that the best way to accomplish that goal was through continued military action.

“If we’re gonna get an agreement that’s good, we’ve got to break their will,” Bacon said during his panel with Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) “We’re going to have to put military pressure and block every single dollar from coming into Iran if we’re going to get them to the right spirit to negotiate.”

At this point, “the president looks too eager to get a deal,” Bacon said. “That does not work with Iran.”

The congressman made the comments before Trump declared that he had canceled a planned round of strikes and that “discussions” with the Iranian government had been “approved.”

Trump has announced an imminent agreement at least 38 times since the war started at the end of February, according to CNN — which Ernst interpreted as a sign that Tehran was not prepared to strike a deal. “We continue to go down this path of trying to keep Iran at the table in good faith negotiations, but we have seen that the Iranians don’t negotiate in good faith,” she said.

“I have called him the ‘president of peace’ before because he is truly trying to get to a point where we have a much more stable Middle East, and in order to do that we really have to put the bully, Iran, back on its heels.” Ernst described the current state of affairs as a “tenuous ceasefire” even though the U.S. and Iran have exchanged strikes across the Middle East over the past few days.

The war recently crossed the 100-day mark, and congressional skepticism continues to grow. Recent war powers votes in both chambers have been supported by a majority of those voting, including a handful of Republicans. Ernst however, told CNAS CEO Richard Fontaine that Trump acted within his authority to go to war with Iran.

“I don’t think the president did need authorization. There was a clear danger and the intelligence points to that,” Ernst said.

Tulsi Gabbard, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence, testified in March that since the June 2025 U.S.-Israel strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, Iran had undertaken “no efforts” to “try to rebuild their enrichment capability.”