Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby faced tough questions Thursday about President Donald Trump’s previous statements about war with Iran.
While Colby was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, the Democratic ranking member said that the president broke his campaign promise.
Colby appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday to testify about the recently-released 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS). Several lawmakers focused on the U.S.’s Operation Epic Fury, as U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran continue.
‘When President Trump was running for office, he said over and over and over again, ‘I’m not going to do wars.’ In fact, he very specifically said, ‘If I’m president, we will not go to war with Iran.’ And here we are. So I’m genuinely curious what changed? What changed from when he was a candidate to when he was in office?’ Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said.
Smith later asked Colby the question, saying that Trump had routinely implied that ‘his mere presence and his policies’ could prevent wars as part of his ‘America First agenda.’ The lawmaker then wondered how that agenda allegedly failed in Iran.
‘I think the president sincerely meant that. He sincerely meant, ‘you put me in office, I’m going to do things to make sure that we don’t go to war with Iran.’ He failed. We’re at war with Iran,’ Smith said.
Colby pushed back, saying he did not think that the agenda had failed in Iran, noting Trump’s consistency in opposing Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. However, the ranking member would not accept that answer and retorted, once again bringing up the president’s statements about not going to war.
The Pentagon policy chief later brought up the president’s commitment to ‘peace through strength,’ citing the peace deals Trump has struck, such as the one in Gaza, as examples of ‘peace’ and saying that what was happening in Iran was the ‘strength’ part.
The lawmaker accepted Colby’s answer as ‘solid enough’ before saying that there was ‘no question that he failed’ in light of the launch of Operation Epic Fury.
Colby was not the only one to refute the argument that Trump broke promises by acting in Iran. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., said that under Trump’s leadership, ‘we’re preventing endless wars.’
Another lawmaker, Rep. Richard McCormick, R-Ga., asked Colby whether he would consider what is happening in Iran to be ‘a forever war,’ to which the Pentagon official said, ‘No, sir.’
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Thursday.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump said that he would not drag the U.S. into endless wars and also spoke against Iran having a nuclear weapon.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refuted what she described as ‘fake news headlines’ suggesting U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran were unjustifiable. She told reporters at the first White House press briefing since Operation Epic Fury began that Iran ‘is a rogue terrorist regime that has been threatening the United States, our allies and our people for 47 years.’
‘The American people are smart enough to know that. And they’ve also been smart enough to listen to the president himself, not just over the past year in this second term, but during his first term as president, and also for the past 40 years of his life,’ Leavitt said. ‘This is a president who has been remarkably consistent on this issue, that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon. And the president tried peace through diplomacy exhaustively and extensively.’
‘He and his team gave it their best go, and the president ultimately came to the determination of that peace was not a suitable path,’ she said. ‘The Iranian regime, they want death. They want destruction. They want to kill Americans. And that’s unacceptable to this president. It’s intolerable to him as commander in chief.’