Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) put President Donald Trump on notice Friday, saying Congress should decide whether to strike Iran, not him alone.
Raskin told CNN's Boris Sanchez that he was co-sponsoring a war powers resolution, as he always does, "when it looks like military hostilities might begin."
"The Constitution is very clear in Article One that it is Congress which has the power to declare war," Raskin said. "That is the sole and exclusive power of Congress."
Raskin conceded that presidents have taken swift action in emergency situations.
"But obviously, if Donald Trump has said, 'Well, nobody knows what I'm going to do. I might do it, I might not. Now I'm going to take two weeks to think it over.' It's clearly not an emergency."
Raskin added that it's up to Congress to consider "all of the complicated policy factors" that enter into a decision to stage a military strike on a foreign country.
When asked if he would support a "regime change," Raskin said he supports it "all over the world where people don't have democracy, where you've got a theocratic regime, an autocratic regime, a dictatorial regime. But, generally, the way that has worked is through Democratic struggle within the particular society itself."
Sanchez then asked if Raskin thought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "exaggerating claims of Iran's proximity to a nuclear weapon in order to try and drag the U.S. into war."
"I just have no factual basis upon which to render that judgment," Raskin said. "And that's why the Constitution and the framers of the Constitution designed the process in such a way that the country is never hurtling into war, but rather considering it in a serious way. And I think that there's a bipartisan commitment to do that."