WASHINGTON • Senate Republicans voted down an effort Wednesday to halt America’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East.

The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against.

The war powers resolution gave lawmakers an opportunity to demand congressional approval before any further attacks are carried out.

“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”

Sen. John Barrasso, second in Senate Republican leadership, said during the debate that GOP senators are sending a message that Democrats are wrong for forcing a vote on the war powers resolution.

“Democrats would rather obstruct Donald Trump than obliterate Iran’s national nuclear program,” he added.

Trump administration officials have been a frequent presence on Capitol Hill this week as they try to reassure lawmakers that they have the situation under control.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war could extend eight weeks, a longer time frame than has previously been floated by the Trump administration. He also acknowledged that Iran is still able to carry out missile attacks but he underscored that the U.S. and Israel will have complete dominance of Iranian airspace in a few days.

Hegseth also insisted that America is “winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.”

U.S. service members “remain in harm’s way, and we must be clear-eyed that the risk is still high,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same press conference.

Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait.

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa acknowledged the human costs of the war in her floor speech. One of the soldiers killed Sunday was from Iowa and a National Guard unit from her state was also attacked in Syria in December, resulting in the deaths of two other soldiers.

“But now is our opportunity to bring an end to the decades of chaos,” said Ernst, who herself served as an officer in the Iowa National Guard for two decades.

“The sooner the better,” she added.

Trump has not ruled out deploying U.S. ground troops. He has said he is hoping to end the bombing campaign within a few weeks. The administration has given several goals for the war over the last few days, including regime change to stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities to crippling its navy and missile programs.

“We should be careful about opening a door into chaos in the Middle East when we cannot see the other side of it,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said after the vote concluded.

He said he is praying for “grace to find a path forward together where more do not needlessly join those who have already fallen in this new war in the Middle East.”

The votes in Congress this week represented potentially consequential markers of just where lawmakers stand on the war, as they look ahead to midterm elections and the consequences of the conflict.

Republican leaders have successfully, though narrowly, defeated a series of war powers resolutions pertaining to several other conflicts that Trump has entered or threatened to enter. This one, however, was different.

Unlike Trump’s military campaigns against alleged drug boats or Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the attack on Iran represents an open-ended conflict that is already ricocheting across the region. Several senators who have voted for previous war powers resolutions noted that they opposed this one because it applied to a conflict that is already raging.

“Passing this resolution now would send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops,” said GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

On the other side of the Capitol, an intense debate over the war unfolded before a vote Thursday. The House first debated a resolution presented by GOP leadership affirming that Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, said before the debate that the hardest votes he has taken in Congress have been to decide whether to send U.S. troops to war.

“Our young men and women’s lives are on the line,” he said.

At a news conference Wednesday, Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. “I learned when I was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that when elites in Washington bang the war drums, pound their chest, talk about the costs of war and act tough, they’re not talking about them doing it, they’re not talking about their kids,” Crow said. “They’re talking about working class kids like us.”

Rep. Brian Mast, the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his own constitutional authority to defend the U.S. against the “imminent threat” of Iran.

Mast, an Army veteran who worked as a bomb disposal expert in Afghanistan, said the Democratic resolution is effectively asking “that the president do nothing.”