Senator Chris Murphy emerged from a two-hour classified congressional briefing Tuesday calling the Trump administration’s war plans “incoherent and incomplete” and warning that the conflict risks becoming an “endless war” — the latest sign of deepening Democratic unease over a military campaign now in its 12th day.
“All the briefings are closed, because Trump can’t defend this war in public,” Murphy wrote on Bluesky after the session. “But you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.”
The Connecticut Democrat said he could not disclose classified details but laid out several specific concerns. Destroying Iran’s nuclear program — which Trump has repeatedly cited as a key objective — does not appear on the administration’s list of actual war goals, Murphy said. Regime change in Tehran is also not part of the strategy.
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“So they are going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime — probably a MORE anti-American hardline regime — will still be in charge,” he said.
Murphy also said briefers offered no clear plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the critical oil chokepoint Iran has effectively shut down since the war began February 28. “They had NO PLAN,” he wrote. “Right now, they don’t know how to get it safely back open. Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.”
Other Democrats expressed similar alarm. Al Jazeera reported that Senator Richard Blumenthal said he left the briefing “dissatisfied and angry,” warning that the administration appears to be “on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran.” Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned the financial burden of the campaign.
Murphy, who sits on the Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations Committees, has since vowed to use Senate procedural rules to force daily floor debate on the war. Six Senate Democrats are also demanding public testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before their respective committees.
The classified briefings were led by Rubio and Hegseth. The White House has not responded to Democratic demands for open hearings.
In a Senate floor speech last week, Murphy also argued that Trump lacks constitutional authority to wage the war without a congressional authorization for use of military force, and that if such a vote were held, it would fail.
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