President Trump suggested late Wednesday he’s avoiding describing the military conflict with Iran as a “war” because of concerns around the fact that Congress hasn’t authorized military force.
“I won’t use the word ‘war’ because they say, if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” the president said at an event for House Republicans’ fundraising arm. “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval, so I’ll use the word ‘military operation,’ which is really what it is.”
The president has avoided the term in the past, saying Tuesday that “people don’t like me using the word ‘war,’ so I won’t, but the Democrats call it a war.” At one point earlier this month, he told reporters he viewed the conflict as “an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” He has also frequently argued that the war in Iran is a short-term conflict that he expects to wrap up soon.
But Mr. Trump has still occasionally called it a war, including during Wednesday evening’s speech, when he said: “The war essentially ended a few days after we went in.”
Behind the semantic issue is a legal question about whether the president needed approval from Congress to launch military strikes against Iran last month.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but it makes the president the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The 1970s-era War Powers Act generally restricts military hostilities to 60 days unless Congress authorizes the use of military force, though presidents from both parties have tested the limits of that law. Mr. Trump has argued the law is unconstitutional.
Democratic lawmakers have argued Mr. Trump has acted without legal authority by launching strikes against Iran without seeking congressional authorization first, and have questioned whether Iran posed an “imminent” threat to the U.S.
Since the war started, Senate Democrats have held three votes seeking to end the U.S. offensive in Iran unless Congress gives permission for it to continue, but those votes have fallen short mainly due to Republican opposition. In the most recent vote on Tuesday, every Democrat except Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted in favor of reining in Mr. Trump’s war powers in Iran, and every Republican except Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against it.
“I don’t think we have had a moment like this, where the United States has been unquestionably at war with a foreign power, where American soldiers are dying as we speak, and it is being hidden actively from the public by the Congress,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who sponsored the war powers resolution, said ahead of Tuesday’s procedural vote.”
The Trump administration and most Republicans argue the war is legally and constitutionally justified due to a threat posed by Iranian missiles. In a notice to Congress after the operation began, Mr. Trump said he “acted pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to conduct United States foreign relations.”
“Despite my Administration’s repeated efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution to Iran’s malign behavior, the threat to the United States and its allies and partners became untenable,” Mr. Trump wrote in the notice.
Several congressional Republicans have echoed Mr. Trump’s word choices. House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a press conference shortly after the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran: “We’re not at war right now. We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission.”
This isn’t the first time that a military operation has sparked a war of words. When former President Barack Obama launched airstrikes against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, his administration argued it didn’t need authorization from Congress. At the time, officials sought to parse whether the strikes counted as a “war.”
“I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis and setting up a no-fly zone,” Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters at one point in 2011, referring to a U.N. Security Council resolution. “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end. But again, the nature of our commitment is that we are not getting into an open-ended war, a land invasion in Libya.”