Sanders blasts ‘schoolyard bully’ Trump on Iran

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke out against President Trump’s rhetoric amid tensions with Iran Monday, calling Trump a “schoolyard bully.”

“Trump, the schoolyard bully, is threatening to take us into another war in the Middle East. Just what we need!” Sanders tweeted in response to a Sunday tweet in which Trump said a war would mean “the official end of Iran.”

“But it will not be Trump’s or his billionaire friend’s kids and grandkids who fight and die in that war,” Sanders wrote. “It will be working-class kids. No war with Iran!”

Trump, the schoolyard bully, is threatening to take us into another war in the Middle East. Just what we need! But it will not be Trump’s or his billionaire friend’s kids and grandkids who fight and die in that war. It will be working-class kids. No war with Iran! https://t.co/b32MYKtd4P

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 20, 2019

{mosads}Sanders, one of the most consistently anti-war candidates in the crowded Democratic presidential field, launched a petition last week calling on Congress to pass legislation banning military action against Iran without congressional approval.

“It is long past time my colleagues in the Senate reassert that authority,” Sanders said in a campaign email. “It is something we must do again as the president marches us toward war with Iran.”

Sanders has similarly spearheaded efforts to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, telling voters in a CNN town hall that he was rightfully criticized for not paying enough attention to foreign policy in his 2016 presidential campaign.

Both Trump’s and Sanders’s tweets came amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran. National security adviser John Bolton recently announced the U.S. will send a carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf in response to unspecified acts of aggression by Iran.

Iran recently announced it will scale back some of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump announced in 2018 the U.S. would withdraw from. Earlier this year, the U.S. named Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, with Iran responding in kind for U.S. troops in the Middle East.