Neoconservative Dan Senor, who worked to spin the Iraq war for the Bush administration, said on Sunday that he was worried that if Congress votes against military action in Syria then lawmakers may refuse to use military force against countries like Iran for the rest of President Barack Obama’s term.

During a panel discussion on ABC News, Senor pointed out that there were two camps within the Republican Party.

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“One is sort of the Rand Paul camp: loosely defined, isolationists, doesn’t want to be engaged in the world no matter what Obama says, can’t be moved,” he explained. “There’s another camp… which has been supportive of engagement in the world, but they say they don’t trust Obama, they don’t have confidence in him, they don’t think he competent.”

“And the problem with that argument is it means that they’re not going to be for any military force anywhere for the next three years,” Senor warned. “President Obama is our commander-in-chief for the next three years. If they’re saying they don’t have confidence in him to execute, what message does that send to Tehran, where we want to be presenting a credible threat of military force in order to get them to stop the nuclear program?”

In the end, Senor predicted that the resolution to use force in Syria would pass the Senate, but not the House.

“And I encourage the president to act regardless, but I don’t think he will,” he said.

Watch this video from ABC’s This Week, broadcast Sept. 8, 2013.

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