We’re Half a Year Into Trump’s War on Iran. Congress Has Tools to End It.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is entering its seventh month after a series of attempts at diplomatic negotiations moderated by Pakistan and other countries in the region. The U.S has embroiled itself in a conflict without a clear exit strategy, and Iran has shown no interest in bending under President Donald Trump’s pressure. As Washington and Tehran continue this agonizing yo-yo of threats, the growing reported number of casualties feel heavy. More than 3,400 Iranians have reportedly been killed, while over 26,000 have been wounded, including at least 4,000 women and more than 1,600 children. On the American side, the Pentagon currently reports that 14 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 700 wounded. However, one Department of Defense (DOD) official accused the Pentagon of “an accounting trick” in order to misrepresent the true casualty figures.

By now it has become obvious that Benjamin Netanyahu played a key role in convincing Trump to start this war of choice, after decades of pushing the United States to attack Iran. In recent years, Israel’s lobby, in collaboration with opposition leaders from the Iranian diaspora — including the son of Iran’s late Shah Reza Pahlavi and his monarchist advisors — and a group of hawkish American officials pushed the U.S. to the brink of this war.

Until recently, those attempts were unsuccessful — that is, until they finally found a U.S. president who would risk a strategic disaster and economic collapse for one of the most quickly unpopular wars in U.S. history. But after half a year of war, the question is no longer how we arrived at this war, but more so how Congress might limit the executive branch and force an end to the military hostilities.

Poll after poll reveals that people in the U.S. are increasingly questioning the motivation and cost of the war. After decades of U.S. military interventions across the Middle East and West Asia that have cost trillions of dollars without any sign of success, Americans have expressed their exhaustion with the financial and human toll of another conflict. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in late July found that only 33 percent of people in the U.S. supported the war with Iran, the lowest level of support measured since the conflict began. Sixty-nine percent said President Trump had failed to explain the objectives of the military operation in Iran clearly.

Diplomacy and negotiations between the U.S. and Iran have repeatedly faltered since Trump entered office for the first time and pulled out of a landmark nuclear deal engineered by the Obama administration. The possibility of a lasting political settlement remains buried beneath the weight of the bombs dropped on civilians, sanctions, military threats, and political calculation. And the consequences of the war of choice with Iran are not confined to the Middle East. Rising food and energy prices, inflation, regular attacks on U.S. bases with an unknown number of U.S. casualties, and the uncertainty over the war’s future have shifted the way both Americans and the rest of the world view U.S. recklessness. And the frustration has only gotten worse; by August, roughly two-thirds of people in the U.S. opposed the war outright, according to Reuters polling.

In the face of clear American opposition to the war, the question now is whether the United States has a functioning and democratic constitutional process for deciding when a war begins, how long it continues, and when it ends.

While Trump and his war cabinet have swung back and forth between the promise of diplomacy and peace or the threats of further military escalation, Congress has unsuccessfully attempted several times to reassert its constitutional authority. Only Congress has the power to declare war, and the 1973 War Powers Resolution gives the president a 60-day clock to terminate hostilities without congressional approval. The president has now blown through that deadline — bringing about several constitutional questions for lawmakers.

An Ever-Expanding War

Once the U.S. and Israeli military hostilities began in February, Iran retaliated with missile and drone strikes. The conflict quickly spread beyond the battlefield the U.S. and Israel likely imagined as the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important maritime corridors, became central to the war. The U.S. imposed a blockade as Iran restricted shipping through the waterway. The conflict drew Gulf states and other regional power brokers deeper into the conflict by threatening energy markets. What was originally framed by Trump and Netanyahu as a military campaign against Iran alone now became a broader regional conflict, with consequences that continue to reach far beyond Iran’s borders. The cost of the war and the Trump administration’s failure to articulate or achieve political objectives forced the United States back to the negotiating table.

In June, with Pakistan serving as the facilitator, Washington and Tehran reached an interim agreement intended to halt military operations and establish a framework for negotiating a broader settlement. The agreement addressed the nuclear dispute, the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions, and other issues at the center of U.S.-Iranian hostilities. But the agreement was temporary, and its 60-day deadline expired in August without a long-term settlement. The two governments now offer fundamentally different accounts of why the agreement collapsed.

Washington demanded that the Strait of Hormuz be reopened and argued that Iran had failed to fulfill its commitments. Tehran argued that the United States had failed to uphold its own obligations, including easing sanctions, releasing Iranian assets, lifting the blockade, and respecting the terms of the interim agreement, which now include Iran’s insistence on authority over the Strait. Iran has said the Strait will remain closed until the United States meets those conditions.

The costs of the Israel-U.S. war have been steep for the U.S. military in terms of both destruction of its bases in the region and the amount spent on dwindling munitions, without even taking into account the strategic embarrassment. Negotiations may look bleak, but they are necessary. And this is where serious discussion about war powers begins.

Congress’s Role During the War

The constitutional confrontation began almost immediately after the war began.

The Trump administration submitted a report to Congress under the War Powers Resolution in early March. As congressional records from that time acknowledge, Congress had neither declared war against Iran nor established a specific Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) authorizing the hostilities.

To halt further military action, members of Congress introduced resolutions invoking the War Powers Resolution and called for the removal of U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities against Iran. One House resolution explicitly stated that Congress had neither declared war nor provided a specific statutory authorization for the conflict.

The Trump administration, however, has used a dubious legal argument to suggest that the president possesses independent constitutional authority under Article II to use military force to defend the United States and its forces. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the U.S. military operations against Iran and explicitly invoked Trump’s Article II authority. Rubio argued that the president, as commander in chief, has constitutional authority to enter a war without congressional approval.

That disagreement lays the foundation for the current constitutional crisis.

After all, the War Powers Resolution was designed to give Congress a mechanism to restrict presidential military action when U.S. forces are placed in harm’s way without congressional authorization. But when the existence of the law does not, by itself, resolve the larger constitutional dispute over the scope of presidential power, what else can Congress do?

A Path Forward Beyond More War Powers Resolutions

Congress can strengthen congressional oversight over the war by requiring mandatory reporting, conducting investigations, and using the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to audit the executive branch. How can Congress exercise its war powers if it doesn’t know what the Trump administration seeks to do?

In the past, the Government Accountability Office has examined the Department of Defense’s use of war-related appropriations and requested additional reporting on funding costs. GAO found that during the post-9/11 wars there were significant shortfalls and problems with DOD’s cost reporting, which led the GAO to request that Congress expand its requirements and assessments of the adequacy of war spending and address the gaps. Neither the Department of Defense nor Congress could reliably determine how much the war cost the country or how the appropriated funds were being used.

Congress can also condition appropriations — this is the strongest alternative to a War Powers Resolution. Congress controls federal spending and has the power to pass appropriations legislation specifying what military activities particular funds may or may not support. This creates a much more concrete mechanism than a symbolic resolution that attempts to curtail Trump’s actions, which have already flouted the law. For critics who challenge whether or not this approach limits military spending — which is already inflated — the answer is that Congress can actually fund the military without funding any operation the president chooses to undertake. For example, Congress could allocate money for protection of all U.S. bases and personnel; for force protection; for missile interceptors; for medical capabilities and evacuation; and for replacement of munitions and replenishment of stockpiles while simultaneously restricting funds for offensive operations.

Congress can also establish statutory conditions controlling the continuation of military operations by enacting legislation that requires congressional authorization for continued offensive hostilities. For example, Congress could enact legislation providing that appropriated funds may not be used for specified offensive hostilities against Iran unless Congress enacts a specific AUMF.

Congress could also implement restrictions directly through the National Defense Authorization Act, which can establish mandatory reporting requirements concerning military operations and costs, restrict transfer of military resources, require congressional notification before a specific operation, and prohibit particular military activities.

Additionally, Congress can also exercise its power over U.S. arms transfers and military assistance to Israel. Under the Arms Export Control Act and related foreign-assistance laws, Congress has a role in reviewing proposed arms sales and can pass legislation to prohibit or modify a proposed transfer. The Trump administration has approved billions of dollars in military sales to Israel. When Republican Congressman Thomas Massie introduced what became known as the “Massie Amendment,” which sought to cut 3.3 billion in annual military funding to Israel, the amendment was defeated 314 to 104.

Congress can also use the power of the purse to force negotiations by using appropriations to condition continued funds for certain offensive operations on requirements such as compliance with a ceasefire, submission of a diplomatic or military strategy, or congressional authorization. Congress has the power to decide how appropriated funds may be used and impose statutory conditions on their expenditure.

Lastly, Congress has the constitutional power to impeach the president. Potential grounds for impeaching the president over his conduct and starting an unpopular war could be abuse of executive power, misuse of military authority, defiance of federal law, concealing or misleading Congress by withholding information, and usurpation of Congress’s war powers by knowingly continuing hostilities toward Iran despite congressional restrictions. The House can impeach a president by a majority vote, which leads to the Senate conducting a trial that could remove the president by a two-thirds vote.

This step might just be one of the most complicated, with the U.S. House and Senate being controlled by the Republicans. Indeed, all of these require congressional majorities to pass. With the war’s continued unpopularity, though, it’s important to put members of Congress on the record about both their support of the war as well as the funding of it. And ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, it’s crucial to put forward ideas that a new Congress could adopt immediately to constrain Trump’s illegal military actions wherever they occur. It will take movements pushing these demands forward to make them a reality.

Beyond the halls of Congress, beyond appropriations, resolutions, and arguments over who upholds the Constitution and who does not, there is a psychological and human cost to this war. In Iran, decades of sanctions and economic hardship, combined with the fear of another war expanding within the country, have enacted countless harms on the lives of innocent people. For those living abroad, the terror of not knowing whether their loved ones are safe has painted a stark picture of what war means. In the United States, the costs, while less dire, manifest differently: higher grocery prices, a lack of social programs, military casualties, and rising gas prices place the burden of this war on Americans who pay for it. Two sets of people, separated by borders and politics, live under the shadow of the same conflict. And while governments debate strategy and national interest behind closed doors, ordinary people carry the weight of a war they had no say in entering. Perhaps this is the moral question Congress must confront above all else: not simply its obligation to uphold the Constitution, but whether it dares to end the war before another generation is asked to pay its price.