President Trump blew past any initial Congressional opposition to his intensive military campaign against Iran. Today, he’ll try to do that again. Senate are to vote to force Trump to end the Iran strikes. But will it matter?
While Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war, the last time that happened was World War II. The War Powers Resolution, passed amid the undeclared Vietnam War, is aimed at forcing the US president to essentially check-in after a few days, and to potentially have sustained military engagement called off after two to three months. It’s been brought to a vote numerous times during previous administrations, including several instances under Trump during his two terms, but to no effect.
Trump clearly has the votes in Republican-controlled Congress to zip through what today looks like a relatively minor speed bump in the federal division-of-power construct in the United States. Members of the Senate, and subsequently of the House of Representatives, this week will be on the record as to how they stand on the Iran War — and, by all measures, it is indeed a full-scale war, Gulf War III.
Through a mosaic of public statements, President Trump has laid out his goals as the Iran war approaches the end of its first week: toppling the autocratic Iranian regime and, in the process, preventing Tehran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons and destroying its lethal regional missile force that threatens U.S. troops and our allies in the region.
So far, the U.S.-Israeli campaign has been successful on the battlefield. Iran’s central command, its navy, and its seemingly ubiquitous missile and rocket launchers have all been hit massively. But “incoming” ballistic missile and drone damage to long-standing U.S. military installations in the region has been significant — and it continues. This is a far cry from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces firing off dozens of wayward Scud missiles back in the first Gulf War, a conflict involving many thousands of ground troops facing off against Hussein’s army from dozens of countries. This time, it’s a guided missile war with large lethal impacts.
While the loss of life among deployed members of the U.S. military has been relatively low thus far, those numbers could rise dramatically, along with non-combatant casualties among our allies, as well as the citizens of Iran. And the world economy is starting to feel the impact: the vital Strait of Hormuz, the choke point for 20 percent of global crude, is being contested, and oil prices are shooting up.
How this will end is uncertain, but one thing that is well demonstrated by history is that you can’t defeat a fortified enemy with missile barrages and air campaigns alone. Regime change is long and hard, and it comes with a price. Have Washington and Tel Aviv fully anticipated the endgame, or have they potentially miscalculated?
The notion that American and Israeli strikes would be sufficient to encourage the Iranian population to take back their destiny, their sovereignty, from theocratic despots in Tehran is being sorely tested. Both President Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu have exhorted the Iranian people to take back the streets, but those huge revolutionary outpourings have not yet occurred.
Why? Is it because Iranian citizens are afraid of further mass executions like those that occurred before the joint strike? This most certainly is a factor. Yet, what if the joint strike is having an opposite effect on the street in Iran? To what extent is the massive assault engendering a prevailing sense of anti-foreign nationalism in the broader population — a risk that existed from the beginning in contemplating any US or Israeli military campaign toward regime change?
Today’s war is meant to avoid direct face-to-face engagement of troops on the ground: a primarily “stand-off” munitions war, the outcome of which is being gauged by the ability of the US and Israel to swiftly knock-out Iran’s huge stockpile of inventoried ballistic missiles and, no less significant, by the U.S., Israel and Gulf allies’ ability to withstand incoming attacks with sufficient volume of missile-interceptor systems.
It’s a brutal calculus, an inside-the-tent bean-counting exercise focused on Iran’s launch capacity. Yet it’s a very real, day-to-day scenario that has Washington concerned about running out of advanced Patriot, Aegis and THAAD anti-missile systems in the weeks ahead, should this high-tempo war go long.
Despite early success, Washington is worried. The transfer of anti-ballistic-missile systems from America’s bases in South Korea is being discussed.
President Trump posted a jumbled statement on Monday, voicing confidence in America’s ability to protect its troops and regional allies with anti-missile systems on site. But here’s the rub: he was warned repeatedly by senior U.S. military leaders that the United States might not have sufficient stockpile depth to accomplish the desired sustained air campaign and the ultimate mission of regime change.
Iran is a mountainous nation of 92 million people. Its autocratic mullahs and their militant Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) cadres have been funnelling billions in oil-revenue into developing one of the world’s most formidable arrays of advanced missile systems — and into medium-range drones, the latter having been deployed by ally Russia to powerful effect in Moscow’s four-year invasion of Ukraine. To be sure, Iran’s launch capacity has been extensively detected and dented by the U.S. and Israel — but it remains intact.
President Trump is reluctant to put U.S. “boots on the ground” to root out the problem, out of concern for high casualties and the electoral impact going into the November midterms. Yet, can one really effect regime change without ground support? The U.S. deployed over 400,000 troops in the eight-year Gulf War II to oust Saddam Hussein.
The weeks ahead will provide some clarity. Yet, in getting there, many more lives will be lost, combatants and civilians alike. What Trump and his administration must do is define an exit strategy. How long does this go? What does success look like? Will the president, as seems to be the case, turn to the Kurds of Syria and Iraq for an on-the-ground liberation force inside Iran? Will the Kurds across the border follow his nudge, after prior abandonment by Washington?
In Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and beyond, the chorus of concerned voices will grow louder in demanding answers and accountability about the Great Missile War of 2026.
Warren Getler is a former reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the International Herald Tribune. He also served as a senior editor at Foreign Affairs magazine.
