Declaring War, Fighting a War.
Constitutional Limitations
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11:
The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.
Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. That is not the role assigned to the Executive branch under the US Constitution.
Article II, Section 2, Clause 1:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.
The President is in charge of the armed forces, once war has been declared by Congress. The clause does not give the President any independent authority to start wars without congressional authorization. https://yalelawjournal.org/article/deciphering-the-commander-in-chief-clause
Article I, Section 8, Clause 12:
[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; . . .
Congress holds the power of the purse. The President cannot spend money on a war without a Congressional authorization. Trump began his war on Iran with absolutely no Congressional authorization whatsoever.
There is little doubt that Iran has frequently acted to destabilize other nations in the Middle East in its own interests – Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Palestine. This was threatening to the state of Israel, which has over the past several years been degrading Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. Iran was also a threat to the Persian Gulf oil producing countries governed by Sunni Aeabs, such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE and to international shipping transiting the Red Sea via its Houthi proxies in Yemen. Iran’s leaders have been killing their own people by the tens of thousands when they protest their government’s actions. It’s a brutal, dictatorial, theocratic regime.
Iran was not, however, threatening any form of imminent attack on the US. In fact, last summer, Israel and the US attacked Iran and destroyed the Iranian facilities they believed were being used to enrich uranium to build a bomb. Therefore, there was no “imminent threat” justification for Trump starting a war on Iran and killing its 86 year old Supreme Leader without any Congressional authority. This is a “war of choice”, initiated by Trump at a time when US and Iran had been meeting to resolve their differences through diplomacy and were reportedly making progress.
So far, the US campaign has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader and several other top Iranian officials. It has also killed scores of innocent children, including many young girls who were attending school. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/01/iran-us-israel-new-attacks-escalation-threat-middle-east
It’s up to Republicans in both houses of the US Congress which they now control to decide whether to rein in or to authorize the President. The power and the responsibility to act is on them. Congressional Democrats simply do not have the votes to do so in either House of Congress. As it stands Trump is violating his sworn duty to govern in accordance with the US Constitution. He is not the first American President to enmesh our nation in the wars and rivalries of the Middle East; it has usually not gone very well for us and resulted in needless deaths and vast expenditures — major exception for Desert Storm.