Chris Carmichael, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the 4th District, answers questions during an April 2, 2026, interview at the Kansas Reflector office in Topeka. Carmichael said he worked on the Iran war plan when he worked at CENTCOM. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA — As the military’s lead logistics planner for a hypothetical war with Iran, Chris Carmichael reached a simple conclusion.

“You really shouldn’t start a war with Iran,” he said.

The primary reason: the Strait of Hormuz.

Carmichael, a retired Air Force colonel, is among a handful of candidates with military experience who are running for U.S. House or Senate seats. He is a Democrat who hopes to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Estes in the Wichita-area 4th District.

The four Democrats and one Republican all expressed concern with President Donald Trump’s handling of the war, which began Feb. 28, and his failure to provide a clear objective. The United States and Iran have reached a tenuous ceasefire agreement, but Iran has kept its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, upending the global economy.

Carmichael said he worked on the Iran war plan at U.S. Central Command, alongside 50 to 60 others, for more than six years. His last year there was 2019. The work involved reopening military bases in the Arabian peninsula to be better positioned for a war he hoped to avoid.

He said one of the reasons the U.S. is involved in the Middle East is to protect three chokepoints for global trade, places where interference could affect the price of oil. Those would be the Suez Canal, Horn of Africa and Strait of Hormuz.

The plan was to gather support from allies and use the threat of war to deter Iran from seizing control of the strait. Diplomacy and economic sanctions were more valuable tools, in Carmichael’s estimation. By launching an attack, he said, “you basically turn the Strait of Hormuz from a free and open waterway to a tollgate controlled by Iran.”

“Don’t think they’re not going to control it. And what really do we have, or does the world have, as far as a choice?” Carmichael said. “Are you going to continue bombing them forever until they release control of it? You’d have to go boots on the ground and do — no kidding — regime change.”

His calculation, as of seven years ago, was that the U.S. would need to launch a ground invasion with at least 250,000 troops to initiate regime change. It would be a decades-long campaign.

“I would argue that our situation now is much worse than before the war,” Carmichael said. “The whole objective would be to not start the war and use other instruments of power.”

No clear objective

Chase LaPorte, a Republican who is running for the 3rd District seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, said he served in the U.S. Army from 2005 to 2013.

He said Iran presents a global threat, but that the White House should handle the war differently. He is concerned about the lack of Congressional approval for the action. Under federal law, the president would need that approval to continue the war beyond April 28.

So how is Trump handling things?

“In a  word: hastily,” he said. “The military has done their job, but the White House needs to retool and reconfigure how they handle Iran.”

He said the U.S. needed more buy-in from allies. And he wants the president to address Congress and state a clear objective.

LaPorte, who served three deployments during the Iraq War, said he opposes a ground invasion in Iran.

“I’m not saying this in the Bush Jr. way, but I believe we did accomplish our military mission in Iraq. We were successful,” LaPorte said. “But lessons learned from that: I think we need to stay away from actively changing regimes with boots on the ground.”

Don Coover, a Democrat who is running for the 2nd District seat held by Republican U.S. Rep. Derek Schmidt, served in the U.S. Army for more than 10 years. He was an intelligence officer.

Coover said members of Congress such as Schmidt enabled Trump by failing to provide checks and balances. He said Schmidt shares responsibility for the deaths of 13 U.S. service members in the war.

“With no consistent rationale for why this war should have started in the first place, our military has been put in harm’s way,” Coover said. “As someone who served in the Army, I know our military deserves much better than this.”

‘Position of chaos’

Noah Taylor, a Wichita Democrat who is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Roger Marshall, said “people at the top are treating war like it’s a game, while our sons and daughters are being used as bargaining chips.”

Taylor enlisted in the Army a year after graduating high school and was deployed to Afghanistan.

“We are in this position of chaos and uncertainty because Roger Marshall has abdicated his responsibility to Kansans by allowing this war of distraction to go unchecked,” Taylor said.

Kansas Sen. Patrick Schmidt, a Topeka Democrat who is also running for the U.S. Senate, is a former Navy intelligence officer. He said it is unfortunate that the Trump administration “has not made a cogent case” for how the war with Iran serves U.S. interests.

“We are spending over a billion dollars a day, putting our troops in harm’s way, and causing real economic pain,” he said. “From rising gas prices to skyrocketing fertilizer prices, Kansans are bearing the brunt of the cost of this war. Attacking civilian infrastructure would be a grave mistake and a further escalation that will not help lower costs for Americans.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

This article, “Kansas congressional candidates with military experience criticize Trump’s handling of Iran war,” has been republished from the Kansas Reflector under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.