When the Framers of our Constitution met in Philadelphia in 1787, their greatest fear was a “King” who could unilaterally plunge the nation into war. On Feb. 28, as Tomahawk missiles streaked toward Tehran without a single vote from Congress, that fear became an American reality.
Our Founders’ concern was rooted in the bloody history of European monarchs who treated people’s lives as expendable in pursuit of personal glory. Today, as rescue workers in the Iranian city of Minab pull the bodies of schoolgirls from the rubble of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, we see the tragic human cost of reviving the kingly prerogative our Constitution was designed to prevent.
Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress – not the president – has the power to declare war. The War Powers Resolution of 1973, enacted after a decade of war in Vietnam, strictly limits presidential authority. Absent congressional approval, a president may introduce U.S. forces into hostilities only in response to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
Under that standard, Trump’s war is illegal because Iran had not attacked the United States. Instead, Trump justified bloodshed by claiming Iran posed an “imminent threat.” While international law allows preemptive strikes when a threat is immediate and unavoidable, U.S. law is stricter and requires an actual attack.
Trump’s claim of imminence also fails, contradicted by his own statements. On June 22, 2025, he bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities and declared their program had been “completely and totally obliterated” and “set back by years.” If that was true, it is difficult to imagine how Iran rebuilt its nuclear program in just eight months to pose an imminent threat.
Experts say the timeline would be far longer. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said Iran’s nuclear program “stalled” after the 2025 strikes and that rebuilding key facilities would take years. Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, notes that enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels and converting it into uranium metal for a warhead is a complex metallurgical process that could take one to two years.
Intelligence assessments further indicate Iran would not possess an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the United States until at least 2035.
Yet in his Feb. 28 video message, Trump claimed Iran was an “imminent threat” and developing missiles that “could soon reach the American homeland.” Those claims contradict available evidence and underscore that this conflict is an illegal war of choice under both U.S. and international law.
Our Constitution does not allow a war’s enormous commitment of resources and sacrifice of lives to be ordered unilaterally by one person. Instead, it wisely requires wars to be authorized only after thorough debate in Congress.
Had that debate occurred, Americans could have confronted essential questions: When might Iran truly become an imminent threat? Could diplomacy, allowing limited civilian nuclear enrichment under strict inspection, provide a better alternative to war? Would combat produce a stable Iranian government without another costly nation-building effort like Iraq? Would war make Americans less safe by fueling extremism? And is the sacrifice of American and civilian lives justified?
We never debated these questions because the president acted as if neither the Constitution nor the War Powers Resolution limited his authority.
James Madison warned of this danger in 1793: “War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement … In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department.”
Abraham Lincoln expressed the same concern in 1848 when he wrote that kings had long “involved and impoverished their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.” The Framers, Lincoln said, understood this danger and “resolved to frame the Constitution so that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
If the power to declare war can be seized by a single man on a Saturday morning in February, then the Constitution is no longer a shield for the people. It is merely a souvenir of the republic we were once told we could keep.
Geoff Craig is a retired lawyer, legal scholar and Catholic theologian. He holds degrees in economics from Colorado College and a Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado Law School. He can be reached at geofffortruth@gmail.com.
