Debate on war powers: who has the authority of military strikes on Iran?

The founding fathers were clear about many things, but in the era of modern war, which calls for the shots and has the last word to go to battle was not the most crystalline moment of the founders.

Article I, section 8 of the Constitution grants the Congress the power to “declare war”. But article II, article 2 of the constitution anointed the president “commander -in -chief”.

Constitutional scholars argue that the congress must adopt a resolution before sending service staff in hostilities abroad under the aegis of the “war”. But what happens if you simply send B-2 bombers from the Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri to fly halfway through the world and Slingshot 14 Bunker Buster Bombs in three of the Iranian nuclear installations? Or if you are also in class Greenlight Ohio to draw 30 Tomahawk missiles in Iran?

Trump receives mixed support from Congress for Iran strikes while war powers debate rages

The debate on who can declare war rages at the Congress. (Getty Images)

Are you “at war?” Does the president have the power to do this? And the congress?

Well, if you say that the president – or the congress – both may be right.

Or bad.

“I am someone who believes in the Constitution and the law on war powers,” said representative Nancy Mace, Rs.C., on Fox. “(The president) Donald Trump did not declare war. He has the right as commander -in -chief to execute a very surgical process.”

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The representative Nancy Mace, Rs.C., left a meeting of the Républicaine conference of the Chamber at the American Capitol on June 6, 2023. (Getty Images)

Mace noted “there were no troops on the ground”.

But the Southern Carolina Republican added this:

“AUMF 2001 is still in place. If we don’t like it, Congress should get rid of it,” said Mace.

ALL RIGHT. Wait.

We know what “troops on the ground”. We think (think), we understand what the “declaration of war” is (or are we?).

But pray, you say, what is the world an “alms?”

It is the Congress to speak for an “authorization for the use of military force”.

It’s a bit like the “declare war” congress. The Chamber and the Senate must vote to “declare war”.

US Capitol Building in Sunset on January 30, 2025. (Fox News Digital)

Transom windows, chests and charcoal chutes in the houses all started to become obsolete in the 1940s.

The same goes to “declare war”, apparently.

The Congress has not “declared war” since 1942.

And it was against Romania.

In fact, the United States has “only declared war” 11 times in history.

And Congress is not content to “declare war”. The room and the Senate must vote. And so what the modern congress does now is to approve an “authorization” to send the soldiers in danger abroad. This could be by sea. Troops on the ground. In the air. You call it.

The congress authorized the resolution of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. It was the gateway to years of fighting in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. More recently, Congress blessed an authorization to invade Afghanistan and to conduct the “war against terrorism” in 2001 after September 11. The legislators followed this in the fall of 2002 for the authorization to adopt Iraq – suspected that the Saddam Hussein regime had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The United States and its allies found nothing after the 2003 invasion.

At the point of MACE, AUMF 2001 is so wide that four American presidents deployed it for various military action worldwide. Mace’s argument would be that Iran or its proxies could launch terrorism attacks – or even a nuclear weapon somewhere. Thus, AUMF 2001 justifies an American involvement.

That said, most experts in foreign and military policy argue that AUMF 2001 and 2002 are calcified legislative relics.

This is why it is a political kaleidoscope on what various legislators have thought of launching attacks on Iran and if the congress must get involved.

Democrats who generally oppose President Trump supported air strikes.

Israel-Iran conflict: live updates

In this document provided by the White House, US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) sit in the situation room while monitoring the mission that removed three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites from the White House on June 21, 2025 in Washington. (Daniel Torok / The White House via Getty Images)

“I said:” Hell yes “because I think it’s almost six weeks,” said senator John Fetterman, D-PA.

The representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, d-fla., Is one of the most pro-Israeli legislators in one or the other of the parties.

“This window is open now,” said Wasserman Schultz before the attack. “We cannot remove our boot from their neck.”

But possible strikes worried the legislators even before the United States launched them. It is to be feared that the conflagration can turn into a broader conflict.

“The idea that a strike is going to be adequate, that it will be one and made, I think it is a false idea,” said senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Before the conflict, the members of the Bipartite Chamber have just returned from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

“They fear that it increases,” said representative Don Bacon, R-NEB. “And that wouldn’t take much to make the arrow out of control.”

This is why the representatives Thomas Massie, R-ky., And Ro Khanna, D-Calif., I wanted the Chamber to vote on its resolution before the United States attacked Iran.

The representatives Thomas Massie, R-ky., And Ro Khanna, D-Calif., I wanted the Chamber to vote on their resolution before the United States attacked Iran on Trump’s orders. (Getty Images)

“I would not call my side of the insulationists of the Maga base. We are exhausted. We are tired of all these wars. And we are not interventionist,” said Massie on CBS.

“You waste billions of our dollars because we send more troops in the Middle East. What have you accomplished? And why are you unconscious of the American people who are tired of these wars?” said Khanna, also on CBS.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA., Did not mention Trump by name, but in a screed published on X, she exposed the decision to strike Iran.

“Only 6 months later and we are back in foreign wars, the change of regime and the Second World War. It looks like a complete bait and to go to the neoconservations, the bellicists, the contracts of the military industrial complex and the personalities of the Neocon television that Maga hates and who have never been forms!” wrote Greene.

Representative Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, has also questioned the president of the president to shoot Iran.

“Although President Trump’s decision can be right, it is difficult to design a constitutional justification,” wrote Davidson on social networks.

But with regard to the Republicans criticizing those who opposed Trump, most GoPers faced Massie.

“I don’t know what’s going on with Thomas. He does not vote against everything,” said representative Greg Murphy, Rn.c., on Fox Business. “I don’t know why he’s even here.”

“He should be a democrat because he is more aligned with them than with the Republican Party,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, on Fox about Massie.

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The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that President Donald Trump would make a decision on the United States that is involved in the Israel conflict with Iran in the next two weeks. (Cell Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)

The expression of the Republicans towards the Democratic Party could be a doubtful strategy by considering the vast majority of the GOP house. It is currently 220 to 212 with three vacant stations. The three vacant posts are in districts strongly favored by Democrats.

Senator Tim Kaine, D-VA., Plans to force the Senate to vote this week on a resolution to determine if the United States should argue militarily with Iran.

“We are going to ask all the members of the Senate to declare whether the United States should be at war with Iran. It is unconstitutional for a president to initiate a war like this congress,” said Kaine on Fox. “Each member of the congress must vote on this subject.”

The question of whether the United States is involved in the “war” with Iran is a question of debate. And here is the deepest secret: legislators sometimes preach to the exercise of their war powers under article I of the Constitution. But because the votes on the “war” or the “alms” are complicated, some members prefer to chat them – but will give up their power to the president. The reason? These are very, very difficult votes, and it is difficult to decide the right thing to do.

The founders were skeptical of a powerful executive. They wanted to make sure that a “monarch” or, in our case, a president, could not unilaterally compose the hostilities without check in the congress. But over time, the congress has abandoned many of these war powers. And that is why the executive seems to call the shots in these circumstances.

Are the United States at war? Like many things, it can be in the spectator’s eye.

And if this responsibility ultimately lies at the Congress or the President is also in the eye of the spectator.