Rep. Greg Landsman, the Mount Washington Democrat, is a rarity among U.S. House members on his side of the aisle, in that he immediately signed off on President Trump’s Saturday bombing of Iranian enrichment sites.
“We don’t yet know what this means for the regime’s nuclear work or ambitions, but it absolutely means that the regime has been further weakened — which is good for those who want peace,” Landsman said on X immediately after the bombing raid.
These are three heavily fortified nuclear sites.
— Congressman Greg Landsman (@RepGregLandsman) June 22, 2025
We don’t yet know what this means for the regime’s nuclear work or ambitions, but it absolutely means that the regime has been further weakened - which is good for those who want peace. https://t.co/k3lRFEu8q9
And, on Monday, he praised the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, which Trump claimed to have brokered.
Landsman, like Trump, hopes a ceasefire would give both sides of the Middle East conflict — the Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Teheran — the time to negotiate a lasting peace deal.
But, within two hours of Trump announcing the ceasefire, the Israelis and the Iranians were back to firing missiles at each other.
That has subsided since then, but there is no way of telling if or how long a ceasefire will hold.
Tuesday morning, a visibly angry Trump stopped on the White House lawn to answer some questions from a press gaggle before boarding Marine One for the first leg of his trip to the Netherlands for the NATO summit.
Trump appeared so flustered and frustrated by both Israel and Iran that he spit out a profanity, possibly a presidential first.
“They have been fighting so long and so hard,” Trump said, “that they don’t know what the f*** they are doing.”
Watch it at the 5 minute 39 second mark:
The news media was on fire with the president dropping the F bomb — something you don’t hear from an American president every day, at least not in public and with the cameras rolling.
Landsman, too, was taken aback.
“I understand expressing your frustrations, but I don’t think it is helpful,” Landsman told WVXU. “It wasn’t helpful, but I don’t think it was the end of the world.”
Trump’s frustration may be understandable, Landsman said, “but he needs to understand that nothing about this is going to be easy. There are going to be moments beyond your control.”
Landsman said he doesn’t think Trump should be flying solo on the Israel-Iran conflict, trying to broker peace all by himself.
“Serious leaders build the broadest coalition of people; and that hasn’t happened here,” Landsman said.
Trump, Landsman said, “doesn’t have the temperament to be the kind of leader we need at this moment — the kind of leader who builds coalitions.”
Among Ohio Democrats in the House, Landsman has a unique perspective — he has skin in the game.
The Mount Washington Democrat is Jewish; and he has made numerous trips to Israel over the years. He staunchly believes in Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish homeland, but he believes just as strongly in a “two state” solution to conflict in the region, which would involve liberating Gaza and Palestinian people from control by the terrorist group Hamas — a terrorist organization supported by Iran, along with Hezbollah and the Houthis.
Destroying Iran’s capability to use enriched uranium to create nuclear weapons was the U.S. justification for dropping 13 of the most powerful non-nuclear bombs — the “bunker busters” — on sites tied to Iran’s nuclear program. Since then, Trump has conceded that a report on the extent of the damage was "inconclusive," after first being told it was "total obliteration."
“We’ll have to see how effective it was,” Landsman said. “If it only slowed Iran down, that’s a good thing. The world would be a much more dangerous place if Iran had nuclear weapons.”
The U.S. bombing, he said, “was not war — it was a preemptive strike."
One of the ironies of this situation is that Trump’s decision to bomb Iran is one the Democrat Landsman supports. Instead, it is Republican members of Congress from Ohio and Kentucky who are giving Trump the most pushback.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the U.S. has no business inserting itself in a war between Israel and Iran. Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman from Northern Kentucky, said the U.S. action was unconstitutional because there is “no imminent threat” to the United States. Rep. Warren Davidson, the Republican congressman from Troy, has said that Trump should have gone to Congress for approval before the attack.
Trump wrote a long response to Massie on his Truth Social site, calling him “Rand Paul Jr.” and threatening to run a primary opponent against him, vowing to come to Northern Kentucky personally next year to campaign against the GOP incumbent.
To Landsman, all of this pushback reinforces his argument that Trump’s big mistake was doing this on his own and not building a coalition of support.
He’s still hoping that the two nations will end up at a negotiating table and work out a permanent agreement. There was one in effect seven years ago, but, ironically, Trump ended it in his first term.
“I hope this is, at long last, the end,’’ Landsman said. “My hope is that this leads to a lasting peace.”
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