Trump Attacks Iran Without Consulting Congress or Offering a Coherent Explanation to Americans

Donald Trump is amassing a very large military force surrounding Iran, but without having made any decision about whether he will attack the country, how we will do it, or even what the goals of the mission are.

The New York Times contrasts this to how other presidents have taken us to war and describes the extent to which we are all in the dark:

Though Mr. Trump is largely fixated on the nuclear weapons program, at various moments he and his aides have cited a range of other rationales for military action: protecting the protesters that Iranian forces killed by the thousands last month, wiping out the arsenal of missiles that Iran can use to strike Israel, and ending Tehran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah.

Then there is the question of whether military force, the hammer Mr. Trump reaches for so quickly, can even accomplish those ends. Most of Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium is already buried from the last strike, in June. And it is not clear how airstrikes would immediately aid protesters around the country or persuade Iran to stop funding terror.

Mr. Trump has never consistently described his goals, and when he talks about them it is usually in a haze of brief, offhand comments. The president has given no speeches preparing the American public for a strike on a country of about 90 million people, and sought no approval from Congress. He has not explained why he has chosen this moment to confront Iran instead of, for example, North Korea, which in the years after Mr. Trump’s failed negotiations in the first term has expanded its nuclear arsenal to 60 or more warheads, by U.S. intelligence estimates, and is working to demonstrate they can reach the United States. …

When pressed on Iran, Mr. Trump regularly deflects questions about whether regime change is his true goal, leaving unclear what kind of end-state he seeks.

The Constitution gives Congress sole power to declare war for precisely this reason: to ensure that the goals, means, and costs of a war will be debated ahead of time. But Trump is asserting total personal control of the government, leaving us waiting to plunge at any moment into a war whose purpose he himself does not seem to know.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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