Trump’s war without congress

The recent unilateral military strikes ordered by President Donald J Trump on Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities – at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan – represent a categorical affront to the structural restraints imposed by the US Constitution, the statutory war powers framework enacted by Congress and the foundational norms of public international law. These installations, far from being covert weapons sites, were declared, monitored and regularly inspected under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in accordance with Iran’s obligations as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Absent any imminent armed threat or legislative authorisation, the strikes cannot be justified on legal or strategic grounds. They are not merely acts of poor statecraft – they constitute a profound act of executive usurpation. That President Trump’s unilateral strikes provoked retaliatory Iranian missile attacks on US military positions in Qatar, further destabilising the region, only underscores the recklessness of his actions. Considered in light of applicable domestic and international legal norms, President Trump’s actions are not only unlawful; they are impeachable.

The US constitution’s allocation of war powers was never intended to accommodate unilateralism from the Executive. Article I (S8(11)) unambiguously vests in Congress the sole authority to “declare War”. This was not a mere formalism. The framers of the constitution, acutely aware of the perils of executive adventurism, deliberately deprived the president of unilateral war-making power.

James Madison’s famous dictum bears repeating: “The executive is the branch most prone to war; therefore, the Constitution has, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature”. President Trump’s decision to initiate kinetic military action against Iran, a sovereign state and UN member, without prior congressional approval, flouts this constitutional design. As the US Supreme Court held in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co v Sawyer 1952, presidential authority is at its “lowest ebb” when it contradicts congressional will. In this instance, Trump acted not merely without congressional support, but in a manner diametrically opposed to Congress’ express constitutional prerogative.

Further compounding the violation is the transgression of statutory law. The War Powers Resolution of 1973, enacted in response to executive overreach during the Vietnam War, imposes both substantive and procedural constraints on presidential use of force. It permits the introduction of US armed forces into hostilities only pursuant to a declaration of war, with specific statutory authorisation, or in response to a national emergency caused by an actual or imminent attack upon the US or its forces. In the case of the recent strikes on Iran, none of these justifications apply. Iran had neither attacked the US nor presented any imminent threat. There was no legislative authorisation. Nor was there compliance with procedural safeguards: Trump failed to consult Congress “in every possible instance” prior to engagement and did not submit the statutorily mandated report within 48 hours of initiating hostilities. The strike thus violated both the letter and the spirit of the War Powers Resolution.

This raises grave constitutional concerns regarding the use of public funds to support unauthorised hostilities. If military expenditures were made without congressional approval, they may have breached the Appropriations Clause (Article I, S9(7)) and the Anti-Deficiency Act (S1341), both of which prohibit expenditures in excess of or in the absence of legal authority. These fiscal guardrails exist precisely to prevent unilateral executive warfare from being financed without democratic consent.

Even more disconcerting is the reported consultation with Israeli officials prior to the strike, a consultation that occurred without Congress’s knowledge or consent. That a foreign government, particularly one outside the NPT framework and possessing undeclared nuclear weapons, was allegedly briefed while the US Congress remained uninformed speaks to a collapse in democratic oversight. Israel’s status as a non-signatory to the NPT and its refusal to permit IAEA inspections stand in stark contrast to Iran’s technical compliance with its safeguards agreement, as reaffirmed by the IAEA’s February 2023 report.

The decision to strike Iran – a monitored, treaty-compliant state – while consulting Israel, a noncompliant nuclear power, reflects a deeply politicised double standard that

not only undermines international legal norms but delegitimises the integrity of US

foreign policy.

Under international law, the illegality of the strike is equally manifest. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, except in cases of self-defence under Article 51 or when authorised by the Security Council under Chapter VII. The conditions for either justification are absent here. The doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence, as articulated in the Caroline test, requires that the necessity of self-defence be “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means”. No such necessity existed. This was not pre-emption; it was provocation.

That brings us, inexorably, to the question of accountability. Do these actions meet

the threshold of “high Crimes and Misdemeanours” under Article II, Section Four of the

US constitution?

The historical and jurisprudential answer is an emphatic ‘Yes’. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No 65, impeachable offenses are those that “proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust”.

Launching military strikes in defiance of Congress, in violation of statutory limits and in breach of international law – all while risking American lives and destabilising an entire region, is a paradigmatic abuse of the public trust.

The unauthorised war-making lies within the heartland of impeachable conduct. To tolerate such defiance is to normalise lawless presidential militarism and to degrade

Congress into a ceremonial bystander in matters of war and peace.

Trump’s decision to strike Iran was not borne of strategic necessity, nor grounded in

any defensible interpretation of law. It was the culmination of a worldview in which

presidential prerogative eclipses legal constraint, where consultation is an inconvenience and where war can be waged in pursuit of ideological or geopolitical signalling without constitutional or congressional consent.

If the rule of law is to endure not as a rhetorical device, but as a binding principle then acts of such magnitude must be met with institutional response.

The survival of constitutional government in the United States does not depend solely on parchment barriers, but on the resolve of its institutions to enforce them. Trump’s strikes on Iran constituted not just a policy failure, but a systemic betrayal: of constitutional war-making constraints, of democratic deliberation and of the foundational post-war legal order. If such executive defiance proceeds without censure, the question is no longer whether a president may unilaterally initiate war, but whether Congress retains any substantive role in restraining it at all?

The writer is a final-year LLB (Hons) candidate at the University of London.

He currently serves as visiting policy fellow – legal & strategic research and editor-in-chief at the Centre on Environment, Law, Innovation & Sustainability (ICELIS Global). He can be reached at: msa.pirzada@outlook.com.