The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to block Donald Trump from carrying out more strikes on Iran without congressional approval, in lawmakers’ first major rebuke of the US president’s war in the Middle East.The House of Representatives voted 215-208 on Wednesday night in support of a war powers resolution, with four Republican lawmakers siding with all of the Democrats in an attempt to rein in the president’s powers.The vote will be seen as a significant if symbolic blow to Trump at a time of heightened tensions over the Iran war, which is now in its fourth month. Several previous attempts by Democrats in both the House and Senate to force congressional oversight of the war failed.Trump on Wednesday repeated the refrain that negotiations with Iran are “going very well” and that US negotiators have “actually gotten along with them very well”. He said, as he did last week, that the US and Iran could reach an agreement on a preliminary peace deal as early as the weekend.A deal would extend a fragile ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, bringing relief to a global energy crisis that was triggered by Iran’s chokehold on the Gulf waterway since the start of the war.The congressional vote and the president’s remarks come amid heightened tensions, with Iran and the US exchanging fire this week in breach of the ceasefire. The US military on Tuesday said it intercepted Iranian missiles and drones targeting Bahrain and Kuwait, although the latter’s airport was hit.Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said Iran “did something, not a big deal. We got it, we nipped it in the bud very quickly.” He added: “Some people would say they were slightly provoked because we took a strong action.”By itself the resolution cannot force an end to the war. Lawmakers in both chambers of Congress would need a two-thirds supermajority to overcome an almost-certain veto from the president.But Wednesday’s vote, which boosts the prospect of a similar measure passing the Republican-controlled Senate, marks the first time that lawmakers in the lower chamber have succeeded in passing a war powers resolution, forcing the congressional oversight that Democrats contend is already spelled out in US law.Thomas Massie, one of the most vocal isolationists on Capitol Hill and a sharp critic of the war, was one of four Republicans to vote for the resolution. Massie last month lost a Republican primary to a Trump-endorsed opponent, and is one of several of the president’s opponents who have been rejected by fellow Republicans at the ballot box this year.The other three House Republicans who voted against the president on Wednesday were Tom Barrett of Michigan, Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026