Foreign Policy

Congress Gave Away Its Authority To Declare War and Enabled Trump's Iran War

Congress hasn't voted to declare war since 1942, yet the legislative branch constantly refuses to rein in presidents.

Fiona Harrigan | From the June 2026 issue

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(Illustration: Joanna Andreasson Source images: iStock, Wikimedia)

President Donald Trump and his administration have long claimed that he wants to chart a more restrained path for America's foreign policy. Before the 2024 presidential election, running mate J.D. Vance dubbed Trump the "candidate of peace." Trump broke with Republican Party orthodoxy during a 2016 presidential debate when he called the war in Iraq "a big, fat mistake." Yet a decade later, his administration is embroiled in a conflict that looks a lot like the one he decried.

The U.S. and Israel launched strikes against several targets in Iran on February 28, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader. Since then, Iran has struck several U.S. diplomatic offices and military facilities in the Middle East, while the U.S. has hit missile and oil sites across Iran. As of mid-April, 13 American service members had died in the war, which showed few signs of slowing down. The U.S. reportedly was weighing larger deployments to the region, and at press time Trump had not ruled out putting American boots on the ground.

The Trump administration offered a wide range of justifications for its military actions in Iran,........

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