They can’t agree on whether it’s a war, a mission, regime change, or self-defense. They don’t need to. They just need Congress to stay out.
Parker Molloy at The Present Age:
By the time House Speaker Mike Johnson stood in front of cameras on March 5 and announced that “We are not at war” and that the U.S. has “no intention of being at war,” here’s where things stood: Trump had announced “major combat operations” via Truth Social at 2:30 in the morning on February 28. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was dead. The U.S. and Israel had jointly struck targets across Iran in what the Pentagon was calling Operation Epic Fury.
Dozens of Iranian naval vessels had been destroyed. Multiple American service members had been killed. The Iranian Red Crescent had reported hundreds of Iranian civilians killed in the strikes, including more than 160 people when a missile hit a girls’ school. And the House had just voted 212-219 to reject a War Powers resolution that would have directed the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran. Johnson voted against that resolution, too.
Not at war, though. Definitely not that.
That same week, from the other end of the Capitol, Sen. Lindsey Graham reached a different conclusion: “We’re at war with Iran. We’ve been at war for a long... they’ve been at war with us. We’re finally at war with them. It’s an undeclared state of war.” Graham also voted against the War Powers resolution.
I went through the public statements of six Republican senators from the same week. All six described the situation in Iran differently. Sen. Markwayne Mullin told CNN “this isn’t a war”; Sen. Tommy Tuberville called it “a conflict that should be very short and sweet.” Sen. Tom Cotton was arguing that “Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years” (a phrase that bends the word “imminent” past its breaking point). Sen. Cynthia Lummis posted that “the United States has been in a forever war with Iran since the late 1970s.” Graham went all in on “undeclared state of war.” And Sen. Ron Johnson wouldn’t even bother with a label. Six people, six completely different characterizations.
All six voted the same way on the War Powers resolution.
[...]
Argument 1: It’s not a war, it’s a limited mission
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops into hostilities and to withdraw those troops within 60 days unless Congress authorizes the action. The law doesn’t hinge on whether anyone calls something a “war.” It hinges on whether it constitutes hostilities. So when Johnson called the operation “limited” and said “the mission is nearly accomplished,” those were words aimed at a specific legal target: if this is a short, limited mission rather than an ongoing deployment into hostilities, the 60-day clock either hasn’t started or won’t matter by the time it runs out.
[...]
Argument 2: It’s a war, and it’s been going on for 47 years… or 50… or a thousand
The second argument runs in the opposite direction. If the first one says this isn’t really a war, this one says it absolutely is, but that Iran started it decades ago, and there’s nothing new to authorize.
U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz laid it out on Meet the Press on March 8. “The Iranian regime started this war in 1979, under Jimmy Carter,” he said. When pressed on whether the U.S. is currently at war with Iran, he landed on: “I describe it as Iran has been at war with us.” Then, when the question turned to the War Powers Act, Waltz said he’d “leave it to the lawyers.” On GB News the same day, he was more direct: “This war has been dragging on for 47 years.”
Hegseth made the same argument at his March 2 Pentagon briefing. “For 47 long years, the expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran has waged a savage, one-sided war against America,” he said. Foreign Policy noted that this was false: “the first shots in the current conflict were fired by the United States and Israel.” And in briefings that same week, administration officials told congressional staffers that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to strike U.S. forces. The “imminent threat” Trump cited in his announcement didn’t exist in the intelligence.
Iran War cheerleaders are eating their cake and eating it too with bad-faith arguments that it isn’t a war, yet also say that the US is ending the war.
