Trump Should Ask Congress to Authorize Military Force Against Iran — but He Doesn’t Have To

The narrow mission would be to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and leave the rest of the fighting in Israel’s very capable hands.

F or years, in reaction to the substantially failed American adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, talk about “forever wars” has abounded. It’s a foolish concept. It should be obvious enough that wars are unpredictable and don’t come with an end date.

More basically, though, “forever wars” is a misnomer because what Americans find objectionable about the post-9/11 wars is not the war part. In terms of combat, American victories in those conflicts were rapid and decisive. What grates is the ineptitude and delusions of the bipartisan Beltway in managing the post-combat phase — in particular, the notion that we needed to mire our troops and agencies for decades in a multitrillion-dollar sociology experiment to determine whether Western democracy would take in fundamentalist Islamic societies.

Still, out of this swirl of misconception there is a valuable lesson to be gleaned from the 20 years between September 2001, when al-Qaeda jihadists backed by their state sponsors slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in suicide-hijacking attacks that ravaged iconic sites in our homeland, and September 2021, when our nation assessed the lethal wreckage of President Biden’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The lesson is this: The support of the American people is critical to the successful prosecution of military missions, and that support will last only as long as the public is convinced that American interests — particularly security — are truly at risk. This is a lesson worth taking to heart as President Trump contemplates a massive bombing attack that would almost certainly destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons development program.

A debate is emerging on Capitol Hill regarding whether congressional authorization is a necessary precondition for such a military strike, which would undeniably be an act of war. That’s a good thing. Our lawmakers habitually duck accountability, preferring to bloviate about tough issues on cable TV than vote on them in legislative chambers. When it comes to the use of force, the House and Senate should conduct serious debates and take accountable votes.

Here, as is often the case, the politics — the drumming up of public support for a righteous mission — is what’s most important. The law is the easy part.

As a matter of law, President Trump does not need Congress to vote an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) because it has already done so. The 2001 AUMF, enacted one week after 9/11, states in pertinent part:

The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. [Emphasis added.]

Like many analysts, I have argued over the near quarter century that has ensued that the AUMF should be substantially overhauled, perhaps even repealed and replaced. It has been the predicate cited for numerous military operations as to which reliance on it is a stretch. To state the obvious, a number of jihadist organizations that have been targeted under the AUMF (including ISIS, which began as a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda) did not exist when it was enacted. The water under the bridge includes the embarrassing facts that (a) our government negotiated with and ultimately ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban, whose regime was the most culpable sponsor of the 9/11 attacks, and (b) in the Syrian civil war and the strife in Libya (to take just two examples) our government supported factions that were aligned with and infiltrated by al-Qaeda.

None of that changes two stubborn facts. First, the AUMF is still on the books: It is viable law and has been relied on since its enactment by administrations of both parties to justify lethal attacks on jihadists and their aiders and abettors, despite the passage of time. Second, whatever complications there may be in applying the AUMF to al-Qaeda tentacles that have only the most attenuated connections to 9/11, there are no such complications when it comes to Iran.

There would have been no al-Qaeda without the training and logistical assistance Iran provided, mainly through Hezbollah, its Lebanon-based jihadist militia. Iran was complicit in al-Qaeda’s operations against the United States, including the 9/11 attacks; and Iran harbored al-Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in 2001. It’s not a close case.

I traced this history in an essay for NR a decade before Donald Trump was first elected president. In a nutshell, Sunni al-Qaeda and Shiite Iran formed a mutual nonaggression pact in the early Nineties, in which they agreed to work together against the United States — as the Justice Department’s 1998 indictment of Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda operatives detailed. As a result, al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies (including Egyptian Islamic Jihad, run by bin Laden’s top lieutenant, Ayman Zawahiri) received training and weapons. In 1996, Iran, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda collaborated in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 members of the U.S. Air Force were killed.

Regarding 9/11 itself, the 9/11 Commission concluded in its final report:

There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers. There also is circumstantial evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives were closely tracking the travel of some of these future muscle hijackers into Iran in November 2000.

The commission conceded that Iran and Hezbollah may not have known the specific details of the 9/11 plan — but, of course, neither did most al-Qaeda cells. It was al-Qaeda’s modus operandi to compartmentalize information so that only those jihadists participating in a plan were aware of the details (and often, only the details relevant to their part); that way, if jihadists were captured, they would not be in a position to reveal other ongoing plots. Iran was undeniably a collaborator with al-Qaeda — training its operatives, arming them, and providing them with intelligence and logistical assistance to wage war against the United States. That’s more than enough for conspiracy and aiding-and-abetting liability even if Iran was unaware of exactly what al-Qaeda was planning to hit.

What clinches the matter, however, is the AUMF’s authorization of force against nations that harbor 9/11 operatives.

After the United States attacked Afghanistan in early October 2001, dismantling al-Qaeda’s camps and deposing the Taliban, neighboring Iran opened its doors to fleeing al-Qaeda operatives. Zawahiri was a key player in this arrangement, and it appears that bin Laden himself took refuge in Iran for a time before moving on to other safe havens. Other top al-Qaeda operatives, including bin Laden’s son, Saad, were surely harbored in Iran. Although the regime laughably described the arrangement as “house arrest,” these al-Qaeda leaders had enough freedom to continue coordinating terrorist operations, including against Iran’s Sunni rival, the Saudi royal family. The protection of Iran helped al-Qaeda transform into a more diffuse organization, with satellites necessarily growing more autonomous from a hierarchy on the lam.

The most significant development involved Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the nom de guerre of Ahmed Fadheel Nazal al-Khalayleh). From his cozy “house arrest” arrangement in Iran — which spared him extradition to face terrorism charges in Jordan, including in connection with the murder of American diplomat Laurence M. Foley — Zarqawi got safe passage into Iraq. There, he reported to Zawahiri and waged war against American forces, founding al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the franchise that became better known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. AQI soon broke away to become ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham). Zarqawi also helped set up terror cells in Iraq that were linked to a network that Iran actively supported in operations against American troops.

Iran’s abetting of anti-American attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan is notorious. In the terms of the AUMF, there is no doubt that Iran aided and abetted al-Qaeda as it planned and executed the 9/11 attacks and that Iran harbored al-Qaeda in the aftermath of those attacks, which led to future acts of international terrorism against the United States.

The AUMF thus endows President Trump with legal authority. That authority is only buttressed by the commander in chief’s Article II power to act against foreign threats to American national security. This was described by the Supreme Court in the Civil War–era Prize Cases (1863) as not merely the authority but the duty to repel forcible attacks against the United States by foreign powers, regardless of whether Congress has authorized the use of force.

Furthermore, in recent months, American forces have waged the most brutal sea campaign since World War II against the aggression of Iran’s proxies, the Houthis. They have repeatedly targeted U.S. vessels. Notwithstanding the absence of any bespoke AUMF, we have retaliated with devastating aerial attacks, destroying platforms in Yemen used by Iran to arm the Houthis and used by the Houthis to attack our ships (along with Israel and other targets). Given Iran’s sponsorship of the Houthis, there would be no problem if we attacked Iran directly just as we are hitting the Houthis in Yemen; and were we to do that, it would be perfectly legitimate to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons sites (in fact, it would be incompetent not to do so).

And let us never forget that Iran was a principal supporter of Hamas, which killed dozens of Americans in the atrocious October 7 attacks against Israel. Eleven Americans were taken hostage, a number of whom were killed (Hamas is believed to be holding the remains of two Americans to this day).

Iran has vowed for decades to bring about the death of America. An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would thus be a dire threat to our security. That is why the regime in Iran has pressed so hard to develop the capability, and why American presidents of both parties have committed to prevent Iran from succeeding. Obama and Biden may not have meant what they said in this regard, but they still felt the need to say it because the threat to vital American interests was (and is) patent.

Hence, it would not be hard to marshal a satisfactory legal justification for a presidential decision to bomb the deep-underground Fordow installation in a mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Comparatively speaking, many military operations since 9/11 have been tougher to rationalize.

Nevertheless, the salient point here is not legal but political. The decision to wage war, which is what an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would be, is the most consequential decision made by a body politic. The Framers vested the power to declare war in Congress, not the president, because the legislators who are politically accountable to the people whose lives are at stake should be involved in such decisions.

Set legality and separation-of-powers principles to the side for a moment. The practical lesson of the post-9/11 conflicts is that war efforts are apt to sow division rather than advance national security in the absence of strong public support.

There is no reason to believe President Trump contemplates more than a lightning strike that destroys Iran’s potential to besiege our nation and our allies with nuclear weapons. There is no indication of plans for a more extensive U.S. engagement, much less a ground assault by American troops with a goal of regime change. We who favor regime change in Iran as an American foreign policy goal have never favored achieving it by an American military presence. One can hope that the destruction of Tehran’s capacity to project power, and the vulnerable state in which Israel’s decapitation strikes have left the Iranian government, will lead to both the regime’s overthrow by the Iranian people and their establishment of a decent government. But regime change is not the military mission we’re talking about. The narrow mission is to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and leave the rest of the fighting in Israel’s very capable hands.

A congressional debate and authorization for the use of military force could crystallize the limited military objectives and solidify public support for them. No “forever war,” no occupation, no lavish American investment in Iran’s democratic future. Just take out the nuclear program. Congress should debate and vote on that. Its buy-in would convey public buy-in. Combat operations are always unpredictable, and public support is key to ultimate success.

President Trump’s unfortunate penchant is to go it alone. While he can lawfully do that, he shouldn’t. Attacking Iran would be a momentous decision. He should want the support of lawmakers — especially those who may oppose him politically but who recognize the vital interests of their constituents and our nation.

In our system, the constitutionally intended and most legitimate endorsement of warfare is a congressional authorization of military force signed by the president. It would be better for the mission and the country if President Trump sought one.