LOS ANGELES — U.S. Representative Gil Cisneros, D-Yorba Linda, is one of several dozen members of Congress who sent a letter to the White House, demanding answers regarding the strategy in Iran, following the killing of Qasem Soleimani who President Donald Trump called “the world’s top terrorist … personally responsible for some of the absolutely worst atrocities.”

Southern California is home to the largest population of Iranians outside of their homeland, many who live in Rep. Cisneros’ district. He said they are concerned about going to war with Iran.

“My constituents don’t want to go to war, so that’s the feedback I’m getting from them. This is why it’s so important that the President come out and lay out his strategy for the future and what he’s going to do about Iran.”

Rep. Cisneros said he heard about Soleimani’s death much like the rest of America – on the news.

“There was no warning to Congress. [President Trump] didn’t speak to the Gang of Eight. We didn’t know anything about this at all, which is part of our worry,” he said. “My concern is that the president did this without getting the authorization from Congress. It shouldn’t happen that way. Congress has the power to declare war and he needs to come to Congress to get authorization for any type of military action against Iran.”

“We have questions to why did we really decide to do this now? What is our game plan for going forward?” he said. “A lot of these questions need to be answered and this was a question that we decided was to send to the White House to let them know that we have questions that need to be answered and they need to answer them.”

Many have speculated that the actions taken by the President have been a way to distract the nation from the issue of impeachment. If this is true, Rep. Cisneros said, that would be “a horrible situation for anyone to think we could create a distraction by bringing us to the brink of war in order to get away from impeachment.”

“When you put your own personal benefit above that of a nation,” he said, “and above that of a Constitution, we need to hold you responsible.”

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