{"id":92853,"date":"2026-05-01T13:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/92853\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:40:09","slug":"at-the-60-day-mark-the-iran-war-is-triply-illegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/92853\/","title":{"rendered":"At the 60-Day Mark, the Iran War is Triply Illegal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, May 1st, marks 60 days since President Donald Trump notified<\/a> Congress that he initiated a war against Iran. The notification of Operation Epic Fury<\/a>, which began two days earlier on Feb. 28, triggered the 60-day termination clock of the War Powers Resolution,<\/a> a landmark statute passed by supermajorities in both congressional chambers over President Richard Nixon\u2019s veto in an effort to reclaim Congress\u2019s constitutional authority over decisions to wage war. Under that statute, Trump must now terminate the hostilities he began two months ago. He seems set against doing so. If he refuses, he will take a war that is already doubly illegal and turn it into a triply-illegal war.\u00a0 He will also make it clear, if it was not already, that he regards the law as no constraint on his use of the U.S. military\u2019s lethal power.<\/p>\n

An Already Doubly-Illegal War<\/p>\n

At the outset it should be made clear that President Trump\u2019s war in Iran was illegal from the start. From the moment it began, Trump\u2019s war with Iran violated the U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, the Constitution vests Congress, not the President, with the power<\/a> to decide when the United States goes to war. The current conflict with Iran makes plain why placing this power in the peoples\u2019 representatives, rather than the chief executive, was and remains so important. Democracy, it was thought then \u2013 and remains true now \u2013 is incompatible<\/a> with the \u201cone man decides\u201d model in which a nation can be thrown into war on a single person\u2019s whims. Requiring congressional authorization is not just a safeguard against potential incompetence, though that is plenty evident in the disastrous war of choice against Iran. It is also because the weighty decision to go to war should be made by the more deliberative branch of government, and the most politically accountable, that the authority to declare war resides in the list of Congress\u2019 Article I powers, alongside a host of other powers on making, regulating, and funding war. (Of note, this war clearly crosses<\/a> even the threshold the executive branch has set for itself on when it needs to turn to Congress to authorize force, though neither the Congress nor the courts have embraced the executive\u2019s highly elastic<\/a> test.)<\/p>\n

Second, the war is a clear violation<\/a> of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter,<\/a> which prohibits the threat or use of force except in legitimate self-defense against an armed attack (or imminent threat of one) or with Security Council authorization. Neither exist here. It is, put simply, a war of aggression<\/a>. Other countries know this even if they have been nervous to call it out, fearing Trump\u2019s wrath. It\u2019s why we have so little international support\u2013and why longstanding allies have refused even<\/a> basic<\/a> cooperation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The manifest violation of the UN Charter also violates the U.S. Constitution: the president has a constitutional duty<\/a> to \u201ctake Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.\u201d This duty applies to treaties that, under our Constitution, are the \u201csupreme Law of the Land<\/a>.\u201d The UN Charter is clearly in this category, having earned Senate approval on an 89-2 vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While presidents have launched wars in violation of one or the other of these bodies of law in the past, the war in Iran stands out as a significant violation of both of these foundational laws at once. The President, in short, has claimed for himself the power to unleash the most powerful military the world has ever seen on the basis, as he famously put it, of his own morality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 60-Day Clock Makes the War Triply Illegal<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop of an already doubly illegal war, let\u2019s turn to the War Powers Resolution\u2019s 60-day clock. In brief, the initiation of hostilities, or placing armed forces into a situation where \u201cimminent involvement in hostilities<\/a> is clearly indicated by the circumstances,\u201d triggers a 60-day clock for the termination of those hostilities unless authorized by Congress (the clock begins when the president submits a notification<\/a> to Congress that is required within 48 hours of the introduction of armed forces, or from the date the notification should have been submitted if the president failed to do so).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some have suggested that a relatively obscure provision in the law permitting the clock to extend for an additional 30 days to ensure safe withdrawal of U.S. forces could be at issue here \u2013 it is not, both because it requires a presidential certification to Congress that has not been made, and because Trump has no intention of removing U.S. armed forces, having recently made statements that the naval blockade and related operations could continue for the foreseeable future. Indeed, rather than scaling back, the president deployed<\/a> a third aircraft carrier strike group with about 6,000 troops<\/a> just in the past few days. He is also reportedly considering<\/a> scaling back up major military operations beyond the current naval blockade.<\/p>\n

It must be acknowledged that presidents of both political parties have advanced legal interpretations ranging from a stretch to implausible in attempts to get out from under the WPR\u2019s requirement that congressionally unauthorized involvement of U.S. troops in hostilities be terminated 60 days from notification to Congress. In some cases, presidents have said Congress did, in fact, authorize ongoing hostilities (as the Obama administration claimed<\/a> in the 2014 counter-ISIL campaign, pointing to the 2001 authorization for use of military force). In other instances, presidents have argued that the clock starts and stops with each discrete strike in a military campaign, known as the intermittence theory or, more colorfully, the salami-slicing<\/a> approach (presidents since Reagan have made similar claims, though rarely in circumstances so clearly constituting an ongoing armed conflict as this one). Presidents have also claimed that U.S. forces are not engaged in what would constitute \u201chostilities\u201d for War Powers Resolution purposes at all, even in situations (like this one) where the very same hostilities were initially reported to Congress under the War Powers Resolution\u2019s 48-hour notification provision (this argument has been more or less strained depending on the circumstances, but has been out of line with congressional intent in all of them).<\/p>\n

The current attempt to circumvent the termination clock goes beyond implausible. It is in a category of interpretation all its own: impossible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Testifying before the Senate yesterday for the first time since the war began, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth advanced a novel argument, echoed<\/a> by House Speaker Mike Johnson, that the partial cease-fire has stopped<\/a> the 60-day clock. \u201cWe are in a cease-fire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops, in a ceasefire,\u201d he told Senators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Secretary of Defense is clearly wrong about the law. The ongoing U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, as well as U.S. forces firing on and seizing Iranian vessels in military operations are acts of war, and clearly present ongoing significant risk to U.S. troops. Indeed, the administration is trying to have it both ways\u2013arguing on the one hand that we have been in hostilities with Iran since 1979<\/a> and yet we are not currently in hostilities with Iran at the moment and thus the clock is paused. Both arguments are belied by the facts. The \u201cceasefire paused the clock<\/a>\u201d argument does not pass the test of seriousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These are Hostilities, This is a War<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the question for purposes of the War Powers Resolution\u2019s 60-day clock is whether \u201chostilities\u201d are ongoing. That term, infamously, is not defined in the statute (there are viable proposals<\/a> for adding a definition, alongside other needed reforms<\/a>). That said, the legislative history makes clear that Congress intended it to include states of confrontation short of armed conflict. The House Foreign Affairs Committee report<\/a> on the War Powers Resolution prior to its passage explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The word hostilities was substituted for the phrase armed conflict during the subcommittee drafting process because it was considered to be somewhat broader in scope. In addition to a situation in which fighting actually has begun, hostilities also encompasses a state of confrontation in which no shots have been fired but where there is a clear and present danger of armed conflict. \u201cImminent hostilities\u201d denotes a situation in which there is a clear potential either for such a state of confrontation or for actual armed conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here, it is outright nonsensical to argue \u201chostilities\u201d have paused (or ended), given military operations are ongoing and U.S. troops are deployed and continue to amass in the region in what can only be understood as a clear state of confrontation, despite the partial ceasefire in effect. (Iran has notably labelled<\/a> the U.S. military actions \u201cblatant violations\u201d of the ceasefire.)<\/p>\n

The 60-day termination clock clearly applies, and now it has clearly run out. If Trump is to obey the law, he must today remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities against Iran. Under the WPR, this withdrawal of U.S. forces occurs by operation of law \u2013 that is, according to pre-existing terms of the statute, without any further action by Congress. The burden was on the president to obtain affirmative congressional authorization before he launched the war (under the Constitution), and before the clock expired (under the War Powers resolution); the burden is not on Congress to reject the involvement of U.S. troops in hostilities with Iran.<\/p>\n

Of course, this president is unlikely to obey the law. That\u2019s why members of Congress have been teeing up bills<\/a> under the War Powers Resolution\u2019s other key enforcement mechanism: expedited procedures to vote on resolutions requiring the president to terminate hostilities. Under the statute, these votes can take place at any time, before or after the 60-day clock expires. They were intended to require a simple majority of each chamber to take effect. But while these votes can send an important signal, they won\u2019t have the operational effect the War Powers Resolution envisions. That\u2019s because they won\u2019t garner the supermajority they are widely seen to need following the unrelated 1983 Supreme Court case of INS v. Chadha<\/a>, which invalidated the legislative veto and gutted the joint resolution mechanisms in the War Powers Resolution and a range of other statutes. As Michael Glennon explains, \u201cThe Constitution\u2019s design has been inverted<\/a>. Getting into war requires a simple majority; getting out now requires a supermajority. No principle of constitutional structure can justify that outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following Chadha, the WPR\u2019s 60-day clock has become more important, even as it has been repeatedly undermined. But it remains the WPR\u2019s last backstop to prevent ongoing unauthorized hostilities. It applies even if Congress cannot muster the supermajority<\/a> needed to pass legislation requiring the president to terminate operations at an earlier date.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Notably, even in its recent era of relative dysfunction, Congress has not stood idly by as presidents have attempted to undercut the law. Members have held hearings<\/a>, demanded explanations on the record from administration officials, attempted to sue (though cases were dismissed before reaching the merits), and introduced resolutions attempting to force withdrawal, though never with the supermajority needed to overcome a veto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For its part, the judiciary has for decades been abdicating its duty to decide separation of powers cases in matters of war and peace. This state of affairs not only makes it harder for our rule of law system to hold, it is also ahistorical<\/a>. For much of America\u2019s early history, courts were deeply involved in adjudicating the limits of the President\u2019s war powers (for example, in the famous Prize Cases on the legality of President Lincoln\u2019s naval blockade of the Confederacy after the outbreak of the Civil War), in policing executive branch encroachment on Congress\u2019 authority to declare war, and even in enforcing congressional limits on the ways in which hostilities could be fought (for example, cases during the Quasi War<\/a> with France from 1798-1800).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Federal judges can and should rein in presidential abuses of power, including when the courts are most needed \u2013 in matters related to war and national security that often unfold in secret and go unchecked by a Congress unable to speak with one institutional voice due to partisan divides. Unfortunately, courts today are unlikely to do so given recent precedent throwing out war powers cases on various threshold justiciability grounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Duty of We the People<\/p>\n

Congress\u2019 best opportunity to enforce the separation of powers will likely be in response to the administration\u2019s request for further funding for an already extraordinarily expensive<\/a> war that has drained<\/a> U.S. supplies of critical weapons. Of course, the tragic and unnecessary loss of thousands<\/a> of lives and the disastrous geopolitical costs for the United States are even worse. The administration will likely try to make a funding vote painful for those opposed, perhaps by bundling the request with other \u201cmust-have\u201d priorities. But Congress will be wise not to acquiesce. Choosing not to fund the war is the lawmakers\u2019 last and best leverage against unconstrained presidential abuse of power, and it lies in the heartland of their least contested power, the power of the purse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In doing so, they would be not only carrying out their constitutional duty, they would be reflecting the views of the American people they represent. According to a recent IPSOS poll<\/a>,\u00a0 just 24% of Americans say that, considering both the costs and the benefits, the decision to take military action in Iran has been worth it.<\/p>\n

Even the minority has power, by simply refusing to vote for additional funding. As Brian Finucane explained<\/a> in March:<\/p>\n

[I]naction could potentially force practical constraints on hostilities against Iran. A supplemental funding bill would require 60 votes in the Senate for passage \u2013 given there were 47 votes in favor of affirmatively ending the president\u2019s use of armed force against Iran in the recent War Powers Resolution vote, opponents of these hostilities have a real chance of defeating a supplemental appropriations bill. \u2026 The power of the purse is one of the few mechanisms available to the minority in Congress (specifically in the Senate) who oppose further unnecessary and imprudent presidential warmaking to put real pressure on the executive.<\/p>\n

The separation of powers in our Constitution, the president\u2019s duty to faithfully execute the laws, the limits in the War Powers Resolution that serve as a backstop against unauthorized, unilateral war-making, and the rules of the UN Charter binding on all nations that prohibit wars of choice \u2013 these are not discretionary nice-to-haves. Abused as some of them have been, these rules still matter. They separate democracy from authoritarian forms of government in which a king or a dictator can launch a nation into disastrous wars of choice, with the terrible human, financial, and geopolitical consequences that entails. And they separate a world of might makes right<\/a> from one in which the rule of law protects us all, not only the weak from the militarily stronger States, but also civilians the world over from the tragedies that always accompany war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We the people need to show up in support of these rules and demand that our representatives uphold them on our behalf. It is not a political issue, it is a matter of keeping intact our democracy and the bedrock rules of the international order that make us all safer and more prosperous when we honor them. <\/p>\n

FEATURED IMAGE: WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 18: U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth listens as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on June 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, May 1st, marks 60 days since President Donald Trump notified Congress that he initiated a war against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20094,32801,32802,20095,12205,2961,6448,34,32803,212,11014,7759,2302,1988],"class_list":{"0":"post-92853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-article-24","9":"tag-article-i","10":"tag-chadha","11":"tag-congressional-oversight","12":"tag-constitution","13":"tag-courts","14":"tag-hostilities","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-legislative-veto","17":"tag-operation-epic-fury","18":"tag-separation-of-powers","19":"tag-un-charter","20":"tag-war-powers","21":"tag-war-powers-resolution"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116499606566472525","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}