UNITED STATES President Donald Trump suffered a massive rebuke on Wednesday as members of the House of Representatives voted to approve a war powers resolution that would halt the illegal and unprovoked US military action against Iran.

It was the first time that the house had voted to defy Mr Trump, as a handful of Republicans joined Democrats to end the three-month conflict.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had tried to abruptly shut down debate two weeks ago when the resolution was on the verge of approval. But he was unable to repeat the feat on Wednesday.

Mr Trump is desperately attempting to find a diplomatic way out of a conflict that many observers have labelled a military humiliation for the US and an economic disaster for the world.

“Enough is enough,” said Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the house foreign affairs committee.

“It is time for the president to do the right thing,” he said. “The people are tired of suffering because of his war of choice — suffering at the gas pump, suffering at the supermarkets.”

The vote on Wednesday was 215-208, but Mr Trump is likely to fight against any measure from Congress to limit his authority as commander-in-chief.

The Senate advanced its own war powers resolution last month when a handful of Republican senators broke ranks with the Republican president in a rare show of political pushback from his party.

Speaker Johnson said that he spent three hours at the White House with the president this week and Mr Trump is calling on allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume the flow of commerce.

Since the US joined Israel in launching the February 28 strikes on Iran, the US has seen petrol prices soar, adding to inflationary pressure on consumer spending.

While a ceasefire in the conflict was declared in April, it remains fragile. Talks for a more durable end to the fighting have dragged on, increasingly complicated by Israel’s broadening war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, military strikes between the US and Iran continue to flare.

Mr Trump said on Wednesday that peace talks with Iran were going “very well” and Tehran has agreed to allow US personnel, in co-ordination with Iranian authorities, to enter Iran and recover buried nuclear material once the war ends.

But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the Tasnim News Agency on Wednesday that “no tangible progress has been made in the negotiation process.”