US House votes to curb Trump's war powers

**Oliver Conway** (0:00)
You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Thursday, the 4th of June. The US House of Representatives passes a resolution limiting President Trump's power to continue the war with Iran. But how effective will it be? Israel and Lebanon agree another ceasefire after talks in Washington on the condition that Hezbollah stops its attacks. And Cuba's central banks' visa and mastercard payments will be suspended from Saturday because of US sanctions.
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**Ash Kusha** (0:38)
The achievement for me is to be able to convey the real human emotions without interrupting the viewer with the notion that this is AI or not, or how it's made.

**Oliver Conway** (0:49)
A film generated entirely by artificial intelligence gets people talking at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Just a day after he was forced to drop his plan for a $1.8 billion alleged slush fund, Donald Trump has suffered another political setback, this time on the war with Iran. Since the US and Israel launched their attacks in the Middle East three months ago, the Democrats have tried and failed to reign in the President's war powers. But now the US House of Representatives has passed a resolution ordering him to withdraw American troops or gain Congressional approval for the conflict.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:28)
On this vote, the yeas are 215 and the nays are 208 The concurrent resolution is adopted.

**Oliver Conway** (1:39)
Four Republican members of the House sided with the Democrats to pass the resolution in the latest sign of growing opposition from the President's own party.
Before the votes, the Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said the legislation would weaken Mr Trump's hand in negotiations with Iran. Democrats said it was an unambiguous message from the American people to the President to end his quote deeply unpopular and illegal war of choice in Iran. The measure will now go before the Senate. But even if it passes, it's largely symbolic and the President has the power of veto. In any case, Mr Trump said on Wednesday, the fighting may soon be over once and for all.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:18)
The negotiation itself has gone very well, actually, very well.
If it happens, it might not happen, who knows. But if it happens, it could happen like over the weekend.

**Oliver Conway** (2:29)
That optimism came despite renewed clashes between the US and Iran, which left at least one person dead in Kuwait. But there does appear to have been some progress in the parallel conflict in Lebanon, with the US State Department announcing after talks in Washington that Israeli and Lebanese officials had agreed to implement a conditional ceasefire.
Fighting has continued in Lebanon despite a truce brokered by President Trump in mid-April. I heard more from our correspondent in Washington, Tom Simons. First, he told me about the significance of the congressional vote on Iran.

**Tom Simons** (3:04)
It doesn't actually go before the president, so it's not legally binding. And as you said, if it did go in front of Donald Trump, he would veto it. And then that could only be reversed by a two thirds majority vote in each of the House and the Senate, which is not likely currently.
Also, the War Powers Resolution, which was passed in 1973, on which all this is based, gave the president 60 days to request permission from Congress to effectively have a war. That clock ran out in May, but the White House has said in a statement that the war actually ended in April when the US and Iran agreed to cease fire. Now, that cease fire has been broken many times. Both sides are using their military to blockade the Straits of Hormuz, but it doesn't look like this vote is going to change very much, but it is politically quite symbolic.

**Oliver Conway** (3:55)
Yeah, I mean, it might all be academic anyway, because President Trump has again been talking about a possible US-Iran peace deal, but has there been any real progress there?

**Tom Simons** (4:05)
Yeah, let's wait and see on that, shall we? Because Donald Trump, there was reporting last week that the talks had stopped, and earlier this week as well, and in a fairly rambling press conference today, Donald Trump said the negotiations were actually going very well. We could see a deal over the weekend. We'll see. And I was quite interested that he gave an example about one of the issues at stake. I mean, Iran has agreed, he said, not to develop a nuclear weapon. But then there was a question of what if it tried to buy one? And Donald Trump said that US negotiators had to effectively close that possibility down, which resulted in another two weeks of negotiation. So it's quite interesting getting an insight there of how he sees what's going on behind the scenes. And he also said that he had previously, he used the word, overrated the need to remove the nuclear materials that Iran has from underneath their bombed out bunkers in Iran. So that's now looking like less of an issue. And that's despite the emphasis he was putting on it last week.