Section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution is categorical. By concurrent resolution, i.e., the House and Senate acting alone, Congress is empowered to terminate any war not declared by Congress at any time. Invoking subsection (c), Congress passed a concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 86) on June 24, directing President Donald Trump to cease hostilities against Iran begun last February.

The vote was not a lark. The overwhelming percentage of Americans oppose the Iran war by a margin of nearly 2-1. You don’t need to be Aristotle to discern the Trump administration’s derangement in fighting to open the commercially vital Strait of Hormuz, which closed only because Trump attacked. The United States possesses more than 5,000 nuclear warheads. Israel possesses hundreds. Iran possesses none. Its embryonic nuclear potential has been obliterated by the United States and Israel.

Trump has predictably refused to faithfully execute the law as mandated by Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution, an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 65.

The legislative veto of legitimate executive action held unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in INS v. Chadha (1983) does not invalidate the concurrent resolution ending the war in Iran. The Constitution entrusts the war power to Congress in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11.  The president is empowered to act in self-defense if aggression has already broken the peace. Iran had neither invaded nor was planning imminent hostilities against the United States when Trump attacked with no constitutionally required congressional authority.

Section 5(c) is undisruptive to the Constitution’s separation of powers. James Madison, father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist No. 48 that separation means that none of the three branches “ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers.”

The Constitution denies the president war powers. Indeed, Madison amplified in Helvidius No. 4:

“In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man: not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy …

Hence it has grown into an axiom that the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its influence.”

In sum, the president possesses no war powers except in self-defense against actual or imminent aggression. Section 5(c) does not exert an overriding influence on any executive power. It does nothing more than implement the war powers of Congress short of impeachment and removal of a president for usurpation.

What should be the next step to end Trump’s unconstitutional misadventure in Iran? The House should pass a resolution introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) directing the House speaker to initiate litigation to enforce H. Con. Res. 86 to obtain a federal court injunction ordering the immediate cessation of hostilities against Iran unless Trump convinces Congress to declare war.

If Iran is a genuine national security threat to the United States, Trump should encounter no headwinds.  Members of Congress sing the same national anthem, take the same oath of office, make the same pledge of allegiance and care for the safety of the United States as much as or more than the president. Trump enjoys the bully pulpit to make his case to the public and can share classified information in executive session with Congress.

Despite these formidable advocacy quivers, if Trump still leaves Congress unconvinced of a need to declare war against Iran, then he needs to move on.

Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is the author of “Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle For Our Constitution and Democracy.” His website is www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com and X feed is @brucefeinesq.