Is Striking Iran Unconstitutional?
“It’s not politically correct to use the term ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be Regime change? MIGA!!!”
President Trump’s words came just hours after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth maintained that the United States was not seeking to topple the Islamic Republic with Operation Midnight Hammer — the military name for the targeted airstrikes the United States carried out against three Iranian nuclear sites.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. According to Amnesty International, the Islamic Republic engages in systematic and widespread torture of its own citizens, including punitive amputations, blinding, crucifixion, and stoning. (Yes, crucifixions in 2025.)
But were they close to having a nuclear weapon, and was it legal for President Trump to send 125 warplanes and a host of specialized bombs to Iran?
In March, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had this to say about Iran’s nuclear program:
“The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized a nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor, closely, if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program. In the past year, we’ve seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
But in recent days, President Trump publicly contradicted her, saying that he didn’t care what she had to say, and that she was wrong.
The Director of National Intelligence oversees the 18 US intelligence agencies. It is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that prepares intelligence briefings for the president to use. Gabbard and Trump have access to the same information. A president publicly contradicting the United States’ highest-ranking intelligence official — twice — is extraordinary.
On June 20, Gabbard posted on social media that she believed people were taking her March remarks “out of context” (I watched the full testimony and included the entire quote above to ensure no context was missing). She also said that America has “intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.”
When asked what that intelligence was and whether it was new, Secretary Hegseth said simply that President Trump had “looked at the intelligence and came to the conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program was a threat” and that he “took bold action that I think the American people would expect in a commander in chief.”
It’s unlikely at this juncture that the public will be made aware of a specific threat, nor is it likely we’ll know soon how close Iran actually was to achieving a nuclear weapon. These are the types of things that will come out in people’s insider tell-all books in 2028, just in time for the next presidential election. (Mark my words — you heard it here first.)
The Sunday news was full of people of all stripes — MAGA, Democrat, and otherwise — calling President Trump’s actions in Iran illegal.
Representatives Ro Khanna (D) and Thomas Massie (R) introduced a bipartisan resolution last week seeking to limit the power of the president to take action in Iran. Tim Kaine is seeking something similar in the Senate this week, calling Trump’s actions “an offensive war of choice.”
“This is not our war,” Massie said. “But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.”
Trump hit back hard at Massie, a member of his own party, saying on Truth Social that “MAGA doesn’t want him [Massie], doesn’t know him, doesn’t respect him,” and that “MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER like the plague.”
Conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Candace Owens are all vehemently — and openly — against Trump’s actions in Iran, despite having campaigned to get him elected. Candance Owens said on Sunday: “What Bibi [Netanyahu] wants, Bibi gets. Never a doubt in my mind we were going to bomb Iran. Now America will also help force a regime change and they will similarly try to convince us that ‘true maga patriots’ understands why it had to happen. LOL.”
A few hours later, Trump wrote the “MIGA” post on Truth Social, and Owens quoted it, using a clown emoji to show she had been right all along about Trump’s intentions in Iran.
But some members of Congress — also from both parties — are supportive of the president’s strike order. “This was the correct move by POTUS,” John Fetterman (D) said. Democrat Steny Hoyer said the strike was “essential to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that “the President made the right call, and did what he needed to do.”
Johnson also tried to get out in front of an argument that is raging on social media: did the president overstep his legal authority? “The President fully respects the Article I power of Congress, and tonight’s necessary, limited, and targeted strike follows the history and tradition of similar military actions under presidents of both parties.”
Three things are true in the debate over legality:
Only Congress can declare war.
As commander in chief, the president does not have to wait for a declaration of war to take military action.
Even if the annals of history regard Trump’s actions as an executive overreach, Congress is the only group with power to do anything about it, and it’s unlikely that they will.
The Constitution grants the president authority over the military, and over the last 240+ years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the president’s broad authority to conduct foreign policy. And while the Constitution does say that only Congress can declare war, neither Congress nor the president (including many presidents before Trump) has held the belief that a president must seek approval from Congress before taking any military action whatsoever.
Joe Biden, in fact, authorized airstrikes without congressional approval on targets in the Middle East one month after becoming president — and it was against Iranian-backed militant groups. According to the Times of Israel, the US and Israel drilled for an attack on Iran a year ago, while Biden was still in office. Did anyone try to claim Biden was acting unconstitutionally by authorizing airstrikes while he was in office? Sure did. This debate isn’t a new one.
Trump authorized many airstrikes without asking Congress during this first term. So did Obama — in fact, Obama dramatically expanded the use of airstrikes over his predecessor, George W. Bush. Bill Clinton launched airstrikes without prior approval against Kosovo in 1999. George H. W. Bush also authorized the use of force without congressional approval. So did Ronald Reagan. You get the idea here. The idea that Trump is the first president ever to launch airstrikes without congressional approval is nonsense.
How are presidents getting away with this, given the text of the Constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973, which limits the power of the president to prevent them from involving the US in a prolonged conflict without Congress’s buy-in?
For starters, Congress has never been able to arrive upon a specific way to enforce the provisions of the War Powers Act. When people have sued about the president’s use of force without first asking the legislative branch — as they did in the Clinton era when more than two dozen members of Congress brought a lawsuit — the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
It’s up to the executive branch to enforce laws, and while the legislative branch does have an important role in checking the executive’s power, the current Congress — and, frankly, no other Congress in recent memory — has been willing to coalesce around a form of action against a president to force them to seek congressional approval.
They could deny funding. They could en masse turn on the president. They could try to impeach him. None of these things seem likely to happen at this moment.
Should the president have used force in Iran? That is a question that will be debated and discussed for decades. But does he have the legal right to authorize the use of force? Absent a way to stop him, the answer is yes.
After his less than intimidating military parade with creaky tanks and friendly, waving soldiers, there was no way Trump would restrain himself from dropping the biggest bombs in the world on somebody. He saw all the glory Netanyahu got for his bombing, saw his own approval numbers falling and didn’t care about the intelligence assessments regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities. So he couldn’t one-up Harry Truman but he could drop 360,000 pounds of bombs. It was the ultimate expression of power. And now we have MIGA? MAHA? MAGA? To which I’ll add MAMSA: Make Anything Make Sense Again. Please. FYI, Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the painstakingly negotiated nuclear deal with Iran, five years after he had this to say on November 10, 2013: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly, not skilled.” Prescient.
The real scandal isn’t whether Trump had the legal authority to bomb Iran - as Sharon correctly points out, presidents have been launching airstrikes without congressional approval for decades. The real scandal is that we got to this point at all.
According to multiple reports, Trump’s own envoy Steve Witkoff was reportedly close to a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran in April. We were apparently getting close to an agreement where Iran would cap their uranium enrichment to levels that would prevent nuclear weapons development. Sound familiar? That’s essentially what Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal accomplished before Trump tore it up in his first term.
Witkoff went on Sean Hannity to announce this promising cap policy, then did a complete 180 the very next day, suddenly demanding Iran eliminate their nuclear program entirely instead of just capping it. Why? Because there wasn’t enough difference between the deal he was reaching and the 2015 agreement that Trump had spent years calling “one of the worst deals ever negotiated.” Trump couldn’t stomach the idea that a successful diplomatic solution would vindicate Obama’s approach.
So instead of pursuing the same diplomatic path that was working - the same path he had initially criticized Obama for taking - Trump chose military escalation. Not because diplomacy failed, but because successful diplomacy would prove his predecessor right. The man who built his political career on birtherism and demanding Obama’s college transcripts simply cannot psychologically accept that the Black president he spent years delegitimizing might have actually negotiated a decent deal.
This is what I call Obama Derangement Syndrome - and yes, ODS is far worse than any “Trump Derangement Syndrome” people claim exists now. Remember how Trump launched his political career? By demanding Obama’s birth certificate, claiming he was born in Kenya, insisting he release his college transcripts, and even criticizing how much golf Obama played. It was a whole Republican movement built on fabricating controversies about Obama where none existed - the tan suit scandal, the dijon mustard outrage, calling routine diplomatic courtesy an “apology tour.” Trump turned manufactured grievances against a Black president into a political brand, and that obsession is still driving policy decisions today. And now, has perhaps added us to an avoidable war.