Law and the Iran War, After the First 60 Days
The U.S. war in Iran turned 60 days old this past week. It’s a milestone that’s more than just symbolic. Pursuant to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, federal law generally requires the president to “terminate any use of [U.S.] armed forces” within 60 days of them being “introduced… into hostilities” unless such use has been authorized by Congress. As Congress has provided no authorization for the conflict in Iran, one might expect the Trump administration to have wrapped up its operations in theater.
But the administration has done no such thing. Instead, in a letter to Congress this past Friday, May 1, President Trump argued that the administration had already complied with the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day cut-off. “There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026,” the letter asserted, flagging the date on which Trump “ordered a 2-week ceasefire” that “has since been extended.” Hence, in the Trump administration’s view, “[t]he hostilities that began on February 28, 2026”—the day when Operation Epic Fury against Iran began—”have terminated[,]” satisfying the War Powers Resolution’s requirements.
At the same time, the May 1 letter also notes that “the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant….” In response, the U.S. military is “updat[ing] its force posture …, as necessary and appropriate, to address Iranian and Iranian proxy forces’ threats and to protect the United States and its allies and partners.” This posture appears to include the ongoing maritime blockade on Iranian oil exports, which began on April 13th. As of May 4, the posture also grew to include “Project Freedom,” a new large-scale naval operation to help defend commercial maritime traffic attempting to pass through the contested Strait of Hormuz that quickly resulted in several exchanges of fire with Iranian vessels. Trump later suspended that effort on May 6 at the request of foreign diplomats attempting to broker a broader peace deal, but some exchanges of fire between Iranian and U.S. forces have continued.
In testimony before the House of Representatives and Senate last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took pains to make clear that the Trump administration would not be deterred by critics of its continued military operations, including those in the president’s own party. “The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point,” Hegseth testified with his usual partisan pugnacity, “are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.” To many observers, the implication seems to be that the War Powers Resolution is little more than a dead letter.
Such bluster, however, should not be taken at face value. The War Powers Resolution’s 60-day cut-off is clearly not the hard legal limit that its authors may have intended it to be. But much like his predecessors, Trump has combined generous statutory interpretations with adjustments to the pace and scope of military operations to purport to conspicuously comply with the War Powers Resolution’s requirements. And even as he’s rejected the War Powers Resolution as unconstitutional, Trump has resisted blatantly flaunting it.
To understand why, one must look to the two mechanisms that still attach potential risk and consequences to violations of the War Powers Resolution: the possibility of litigation, however unlikely that may seem; and the executive branch’s reliance on Congress, which increases as the war continues. Doing so in turn underscores how the War Powers Resolution may yet serve as a limited constraint on the executive branch’s use of military force, in manners that may complicate the Trump administration’s attempts to close out the war on terms of its own choosing.
The Trump Administration’s Legal Argument
The War Powers Resolution’s 60-day cut-off is a familiar point of contention for those who follow war powers debates. Prior administrations from both major political parties—the Reagan administration in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, the Clinton administration in Kosovo, the Obama administration in Libya, and the Biden administration in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, to name just a few—have been accused of ignoring it. Each in turn offered narrow, idiosyncratic statutory interpretations of the resolution’s text to argue that the military operations they were pursuing weren’t subject to the 60-day cut-off. In this sense, the Trump administration’s legal argument fits within a longstanding pattern of executive branch practice. But in other ways, it strikes new ground.
The 60-day limitation operates through the interaction of two separate but related provisions of the War Powers Resolution. Section 4(a)(1) compels the president to provide Congress a report “within 48 hours” whenever U.S. armed forces “are introduced … into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances[.]” Section 5(b) then requires that the president “terminate any use” of such forces “[w]ithin sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be permitted pursuant to [section 4(a)(1)], whichever is earlier[.]”
If the executive branch does not file the report until the end of (or after) the 48-hour reporting window, then the requirement to terminate does not actually adhere until 62 days after the conditions giving rise to the obligation to file a report under section 4(a)(1) first arose. In the present case, the Trump administration filed its 48-hour report—which confirms that U.S. military operations against Iran began on Feb. 28—on March 2, making May 1 the cut-off date. Notably, section 5(b) does allow the president to extend the 60-day window by up to an additional 30 days by certifying to Congress that “unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of [U.S. armed forces] requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about [their] prompt removal[.]” But the Trump administration does not appear to have availed itself of this option.
The report that the Trump administration provided to Congress on Mar. 2, announcing the beginning of “precision strikes” on Iran, only indicated that it was being provided “consistent with the War Powers Resolution[,]” not section 4(a)(1) specifically. This ambiguity may have been intended to preserve a familiar executive branch dodge, wherein prior administrations have sometimes argued that a given 48-hour report was actually provided to Congress under one of section 4’s other reporting requirements, not section 4(a)(1), and thus did not actually begin a 60-day clock. But Trump’s May 1 letter to Congress appears to cede this point, as it acknowledges that “hostilities…began on February 28, 2026[,]” conditions that would clearly trigger a section 4(a)(1) reporting obligation and the initiation of the 60-day clock under the statute.
Instead, the May 1 letter contends that, because “[t]here has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since [the start of the ongoing ceasefire on] April 7, 2026[,]” “[t]he hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.” Several prior administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have used a similar “intermittent hostilities” argument to avoid the 60-day deadline. Under this theory, the cessation of the “hostilities”—or the “situatio[n] where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances”—that involved U.S. armed forces to the point of triggering the reporting obligation under section 4(a)(1) also ends the 60-day clock imposed by section 5(b). If hostilities resume, then that triggers a new 48-hour reporting obligation and a new 60-day clock. Such “salami slicing” (as Brian Finucane has memorably described it) is how, for example, President Biden justified pursuing multiple rounds of air strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria over the course of several years. Nor was he the first.
Yet Trump’s letter pushes this argument in new directions. Prior administrations have generally reserved this argument for military actions they could colorably frame as independent from one another, without a clear expectation of further engagements. By contrast, while there may currently be a (unilaterally extended) ceasefire with Iran, U.S. armed forces are still clearly in a situation where imminent involvement in hostilities is an expected possibility. Indeed, President Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume military action at a moment’s notice.
On this logic, the Trump administration’s assertion that there “has been no exchange of fire” since the onset of the ceasefire is arguably besides the point. Neither section 4(a)(1) nor section 5(b) require an actual exchange of fire to be operative, just a “situatio[n] where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances….” The executive branch itself has long interpreted this language as covering “a situation in which there is a serious risk from hostile fire to the safety of United States forces.” It is hard to argue that such a situation has not persisted in and around Iran since Feb. 28, the current ceasefire notwithstanding.
This is clearest in the fact that, even amidst the ceasefire, the U.S. military is still actively involved in blockading Iranian ports, a traditional act of war that relies on the threat of imminent military force to be effective. U.S. forces have even had to make good on this threat on at least one occasion during the ceasefire: According to a U.S. Central Command press release, U.S. armed forces fired on an Iranian-flagged vessel to disable its engine on April 19th, before U.S. Marines boarded the ship and took it into U.S. custody.
On May 4, the United States also launched “Project Freedom,” a new “defensive mission” that would use more than 100 vessels and 15,000 service members to “support” private commercial vessels seeking to transit the disputed Strait of Hormuz, reopening it to commercial traffic consistent with how the United States and much of the rest of the international community understands international law. During the first two days of this military operation, Iranian forces reportedly attacked U.S. forces more than 10 times with both small arms and coastal cruise missiles, while also attacking and capturing several commercial vessels. The United States in turn responded by targeting a number of Iranian vessels engaged in such attacks. In spite of this, Gen. Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described these activities as “all below the threshold of restarting major combat operations, at this point.” Trump then temporarily suspended this mission on May 6, reportedly at the request of foreign diplomats seeking to facilitate broader Iran-U.S. negotiations, who feared it would upset the ongoing ceasefire. Nonetheless, hostile exchanges of fire have continued between the two sides.
Notably, the Trump administration also seems to be framing Project Freedom in a manner that aligns with certain executive branch precedents relating to the War Powers Resolution. In a May 5 press briefing, Hegseth took pains to describe Project Freedom as a “separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury[,]” implying that it would not be subject to the same 60-day clock in line with the administration’s intermittent hostilities argument. He also described the operation as a “temporary” effort that would soon be handed off to other, unspecified countries to manage, making its projected scope easier to square with any potential new 60-day timeline.
The administration has also framed Project Freedom as a “defensive mission”—one in which, per Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “[t]here’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first.” These comments align with how prior administrations have described similar maritime missions, including the escorting of U.S. flagged vessels in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war and counter-Houthi operations around Iran by the Biden administration. In both cases (and in related legal opinions), the executive branch has suggested that U.S. forces that come under attack and respond in reasonable self-defense while engaged in otherwise lawful and permissible activities are not being “introduc[ed]” into hostilities per section 4(a)(1), meaning that such activities do not initiate a 60-day clock.
Despite this, some tension remains between the Trump administration’s posture regarding these developments and its contention that they are separate military actions. If the administration viewed the blockade that began on Apr. 13—or the incident on Apr. 19, or the initiation of Project Freedom on May 4—as anything other than a continuation of the situation described in its Mar. 2 report, one would expect the administration to file another 48-hour report with Congress. This would be under section 4(a)(1) (which initiates a 60-day clock), under one of the other reporting requirements in section 4(a) (which do not), or under the new statutory reporting requirement that Congress installed in 2023. The 2023 amendment requires such reports “after any incident in which the United States Armed Forces are involved in an attack or hostilities, whether in an offensive or defensive capacity,” not authorized by Congress, if not already covered by section 4’s reporting obligations. Prior administrations that sought to preserve an intermittent hostilities argument have filed reports after each incident in order to do so. But the Trump administration has not, at least publicly.
Of course, if the Trump administration’s current legal arguments prove wanting, it could shift to others. But each has its own shortcomings.
In regard to the War Powers Resolution itself, for example, the Trump administration could argue that the military campaign in Iran has mostly consisted of the sort of limited, low-risk air operations that the Obama administration contended were not “hostilities” for section 4(a)(1) purposes. As for Project Freedom, it has likely already set the stage for deploying the aforementioned executive branch arguments that such “defensive missions” do not trigger section 4(a)(1) either. That said, neither argument is easy to square with the sheer scale and scope of past military operations, nor the ongoing military blockade.
Alternatively, the Trump administration may argue that the conflict with Iran falls under an existing statutory authorization and thus is not subject to War Powers Resolution requirements. During the first Trump administration, U.S. officials floated the possibility that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) might provide statutory authorization for the use of force against Iran, due to interactions between Iran and some al-Qaeda members before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. That said, this argument was widely seen as unpersuasive, to the point that the Trump administration itself did not even rely on the 2001 AUMF when justifying the 2020 airstrike that killed Iranian paramilitary commander Qassem Soleimani. It did cite the 2002 AUMF relating to Iraq, but Congress rescinded that authorization in late 2025.
Or Trump may simply assert that the War Powers Resolution cannot constitutionally limit his authority to use force in this way. Trump’s recent suggestion that it would be “totally unconstitutional” to require him to seek authorization from Congress for an armed conflict after 60 days echoes an argument President Nixon put forward when he initially vetoed the War Powers Resolution, though subsequent executive branch legal assessments have grown more skeptical of this assessment. Trump might also make the somewhat narrower argument that the existential threat presented by Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons constitutes a serious enough threat to the United States that the president’s constitutional authority to respond in self-defense is exclusive and not subject to constitutional limitation. This argument is similar to what the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel implied in a legal opinion supporting the president’s authority to invade Iraq during the early George W. Bush administration—an opinion that has been roundly criticized and was never actually relied on, but that has also never been formally rescinded. Either of these positions, however, would require Trump to openly and publicly embrace an extraordinarily broad view of the president’s authority to make war—something that has fallen out of favor in many quarters of the American electorate, including the restraint-oriented corners of the Republican Party that have traditionally supported him.
In the end, the persuasiveness of the legal argument it puts forward is unlikely to be among the Trump administration’s most immediate concerns. At this stage, the main factor compelling compliance with the War Powers Resolution is the President’s own sense of his constitutional duty to abide by the law. So long as Trump and his senior advisors find the legal argument persuasive enough, there is nothing to stop them from relying on it and proceeding apace—especially if it permits them to continue military action that serves their strategic interests.
But this calculus changes over time. Two other, slower moving institutional processes intersect with the War Powers Resolution in ways that may eventually give its requirements some teeth: the risk of the Trump administration’s actions being challenged in the courts, as unlikely as that may seem; and the possibility of pushback by Congress.
Escalating Litigation Risks
The conventional wisdom is that federal courts are extremely unlikely to intervene in a dispute over the War Powers Resolution. Over the past half century, federal courts have proven reluctant to involve themselves in war powers disputes of any sort, particularly where doing so may interfere with ongoing military operations. Consistent with this trend, prior lawsuits aimed at enforcing the 60-day cut-off have been dismissed on justiciability grounds without ever reaching the merits. This is no doubt part of the reason why the Trump administration (like its predecessors) is willing to rely on idiosyncratic interpretations of the War Powers Resolution: meaningful judicial review seems unlikely.
Unlikely, however, does not mean impossible. Even as they’ve declined to intervene in war powers disputes, most federal courts have assiduously avoided the suggestion that such matters are categorically beyond judicial enforcement. This outside risk of litigation may set some outer limits on how far the executive branch is willing to push its interpretation of the War Powers Resolution. Moreover, there are reasons to think such litigation may be a less remote possibility today than in the past.
Historically, the most common grounds on which federal courts have refused to reach war powers-related questions have been the political question doctrine, which posits that certain matters in areas that are constitutionally committed to the political branches or lack judicially manageable standards for resolution are non-justiciable. While the Supreme Court has never addressed the question, several lower federal courts have cited the political question doctrine as grounds for not intervening in war powers-related disputes, including in relation to the War Powers Resolution. Others, however, have argued against this practice, on the logic that questions relating to war powers are often not fundamentally different from other questions of constitutional and statutory interpretation.
Importantly, even where federal courts have relied on the political question doctrine to avoid weighing in on a war powers question, they have generally rejected the idea that it applies categorically. Instead, most courts have suggested that judicial review might well be appropriate where a president’s failure to comply with the War Powers Resolution reflects a “constitutional impasse,” meaning the president is clearly acting contrary to the expressed will of Congress. In most of these cases, the courts have noted the absence of active opposition by Congress as an institution, as opposed to by a handful of opposed legislators. This is sometimes framed as a political question issue and sometimes as a matter of ripeness, but the logic is fundamentally the same: In the words of one judge, “[i]f the Congress chooses not to confront the President, it is not [the courts’] task to do so.”
The Supreme Court, however, weighed in on this issue in its 2012 decision in Zivotofsky v. Clinton. There, it held that questions about whether a president’s actions violate a statute and whether that statute is constitutional are “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department” to decide, even in the foreign affairs context. In doing so, the Court effectively narrowed the political question doctrine to exclude cases where a president acts contrary to a statute—arguably the sort of scenario presented by the alleged violation of the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock. In this sense, it’s unclear whether the political question doctrine is still the barrier to enforcing the War Powers Resolution it once seemed to be. Where there is a clear conflict between presidential action and a statute, Zivotofsky suggests federal courts may well have a duty to weigh in, political questions or no.
That said, there is another major legal barrier to adjudicating war powers-related disputes that is undisturbed by Zivotofsky: standing doctrine, which requires that a plaintiff must allege that they have suffered a concrete and particularized injury that is causally connected to the challenged unlawful conduct and could be redressed by a favorable decision by the courts. Both broad policy objections and more generalized grievances are typically considered inadequate for standing, often making it unclear who, if anyone, can sue over actions like the decision to go to war.
At present, the only plaintiffs reportedly considering a lawsuit over the 60-day requirement are Democratic members of Congress. And history suggests that they face an uphill battle. The Supreme Court generally maintains that individual legislators lack standing to sue over alleged procedural violations that injure Congress as a whole, such as a failure to seek statutory authorization to pursue hostilities as required by either the Constitution or War Powers Resolution. The only exception is for cases of “vote nullification,” where plaintiffs can plausibly show that, if the executive branch had followed the law, the plaintiffs would have been able to legislate a contrary outcome. On this latter logic, a majority of the House or Senate (or of Congress as a whole) might collectively have standing, as they could argue that they would have defeated a measure authorizing the war if Trump had sought one as the War Powers Resolution arguably requires. But even this case is not airtight. Nor does this threshold of support currently seem likely to be within reach, as demonstrated by repeated failures to pass Iran-related concurrent and joint resolutions in the House and Senate.
Other potential plaintiffs, however, might have an easier time establishing standing. The clearest such group is service members directly affected by the challenged military operations. During the Vietnam War, service members facing possible deployment were consistently allowed to challenge the legality of the executive branch’s actions in federal court. When a servicemember deployed to the Middle East attempted in the lead-up to the 1990 Gulf War sued, a federal district court similarly concluded that he had standing. In 2016, a federal district court reached the opposite conclusion regarding a soldier challenging the legality of U.S. military deployments to Syria, but only because the plaintiff refused to premise his claim on the more conventional risk of injury or death from military deployment. The judge made clear that she “d[id] not question as a general matter the apparent assumption of certain courts that service members may be appropriate parties to challenge the legality of military action that they claim endangers them” and found Vietnam-era holdings to this effect “logical and persuasive.” The strong implication of these cases is that, at least under existing case law, the case for service member standing is a strong one.
Yet service members may be a less than ideal category of plaintiff for other reasons. The president and his subordinates in the military chain of command can always change a given service member’s assignment, potentially mooting the alleged injury on which their standing is based. More practically, as today’s service members are generally professional soldiers—in contrast to the Vietnam era, when many were conscripted—they may also reasonably fear long-term career ramifications from pursuing such litigation. This is undoubtedly part of the reason why service member lawsuits have been relatively rare in the post-Vietnam era.
Other potential plaintiffs, however, may face a different set of incentives. The states have become common plaintiffs in other areas of public interest litigation in large part because the scope of their activities and interests—and the political incentives their leaders face, particularly when they belong to the other major political party than the president—often gives states both a colorable case for standing and the motive to act on it. For example, the Supreme Court has recently allowed states to challenge other federal policies based on pecuniary harm to independent state-run, state-operated institutions. And states can be affected by wartime decisions in similar ways. In California and Virginia—the two states that are home to the highest numbers of service members in the country, and also happen to have Democratic governors and attorneys general—state universities may be obligated to reimburse any tuition that service members may have paid for any semester in which they are called up. While there are ways one might distinguish the two cases, such states would seem to have an at least colorable claim of standing if forced to reimburse tuition as a result of post-60-day military operations in Iran. And there are likely other ways the Iran war has impacted these and other states that might provide other arguments as well.
The key point here is that, however unlikely litigation over a war powers dispute may seem, the possibility can’t be ruled out. Moreover, the likelihood of such litigation is likely to increase with both the scale and duration of the allegedly noncompliant military operations, as such operations come to affect more Americans in direct ways while presenting a clearer and more distinct conflict with the limitations imposed by Congress through the War Powers Resolution.
The executive branch also has good reasons why it may wish to continue avoiding judicial review in war powers cases. Generally speaking, the legal framework that the Supreme Court usually applies to such separation of powers disputes suggests that the president’s authority is at its “lowest ebb” when acting contrary to a statute and must be “scrutinized with caution”—not favorable grounds from which to defend presidential action. Moreover, this debate will happen against the backdrop of a Supreme Court that, while quite friendly to the Trump administration on various fronts, has shown willingness to cut back on the deference usually afforded to the executive branch in reading statutes, including in the foreign affairs context. The executive branch’s ability to use generous interpretations to push back against potential legal constraints on the president’s use of military force is contingent on the legal ambiguity of the status quo. If federal courts are ultimately forced to rule on such matters, they may be less generous—and the results will constrain the executive branch moving forward.
This may be particularly true in regard to the ongoing Iran war. In acknowledging the commencement of “hostilities” on Feb. 28, the Trump administration’s May 1 letter to Congress effectively concedes the applicability of section 4(a)(1). The main merits question for a reviewing court would thus be whether the use of the U.S. armed forces that led to this section 4(a)(1) obligation has truly terminated as the Trump administration alleges and, if not, whether section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution can constitutionally require the president to do so. For all the reasons discussed above, the former is a hard argument to make—and it will become even harder if combat operations ramp up again per the president’s repeated and consistent threats. As for the latter, while the president has some exclusive authority over the use of the military as commander in chief, holding that it extends so far in spite of statutory limits seems like an uphill battle. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh once wrote, “It is not likely a winning strategy … for a President to assume that he will be able to avoid judicial disapproval of wartime activities taken in contravention of a federal statute.”
Of course, if ongoing military operations seem like they are incurring too much litigation risk, the executive branch can always end them on its own, which would almost certainly render any litigation moot. But this would in turn achieve the intended effect of the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day cut-off, if not on its intended timeline.
This all serves to help explain the executive branch’s pattern of conspicuous compliance with the War Powers Resolution, both in the Iran case and elsewhere. Advancing novel interpretations of the War Powers Resolution and adjusting military operations to comport with them reduces the apparent disconnect between executive branch conduct and the enactments of Congress, while still allowing the president to continue some military operations in pursuit of their strategic objectives. This serves to reduce and obscure the degree of conflict between the political branches, making judicial review less likely while also laying the ground for legal arguments if it were to occur. But it also serves as a soft constraint on the executive branch, as resuming large-scale, extended combat operations would serve to spike the risk of litigation and the associated possibility of judicial scrutiny.
Nor does this litigation risk stand as the only institutional factor pushing towards some degree of compliance with the War Powers Resolution. Congress also has a vested interest in seeing the limits it has imposed through the War Powers Resolution respected. Only its means of enforcement are less direct, but perhaps even more consequential.
Reliance on Congress
Today, the institutional interests and separation of powers concerns that once drove a supermajority of Congress to enact the 1973 War Powers Resolution are often eclipsed by partisan politics. The current Republican-controlled 119th Congress in many ways exemplifies the modern trend of legislators acquiescing to the partisan agenda of a co-partisan president, even where it treads on Congress’s authority and undermines policies they once supported. Matters of war and peace, however, are among the handful of issues that can still regularly motivate bipartisan coordination and breaks from one’s party leadership. And for all its shortcomings, the War Powers Resolution still plays a central role in these debates.
Thus far, congressional opposition to the war in Iran has centered on concurrent (in the House) and joint (in the Senate) resolutions directing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran. The War Powers Resolution installs expedited procedures for both concurrent resolutions (in both chambers) and, pursuant to a 1983 amendment, joint resolutions (in just the Senate) that allow any member to introduce them and force a series of procedural votes that could ultimately lead to the measure’s adoption, all on a simple majority basis. But none of the six joint resolutions and two concurrent resolutions that have been voted on in 2026 thus far have secured majority support in either chamber, even on an initial procedural vote. In the Senate, the closest a measure came was S.J. Res. 184, which failed 47-50 on April 30. Meanwhile, H. Con. Res. 40 fell short on April 16 in the House by an even narrower margin of 213-214.
Yet as the Trump administration continues military operations past the 60-day mark, these narrow margins may begin to shift. Already, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has switched positions to become the second Republican (alongside Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to support S.J. Res. 184 on its most recent vote, on the explicit grounds that the Trump administration’s violation of the 60-day cut-off made the ongoing use of military force unlawful. Several other Republican senators have voiced frustration with the Trump administration’s refusal to seek congressional authorization before the 60-day mark and more may yet do so. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has reportedly even sought to introduce a joint resolution that would both authorize some continued use of force while “requir[ing] metrics for success, notice of any changes in objectives[,] and exit criteria.” Thus far, however, Senate leadership has refused to treat this proposal as privileged under the expedited procedures that section 6(a) of the War Powers Resolution provides for such authorizations, as such proposals must be introduced “at least thirty calendar days before” the expiration of the 60-day clock. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) introduced a similar proposal in the House on May 7 that would restrict the use of ground forces and require an end to combat operations before August, though it may face similar procedural hurdles. Of course, if one accepts the Trump administration’s proposition that the 60-day clock that began on Feb. 28 has run down, then the expedited procedures window is arguably still open for the purportedly separate blockade and maritime missions that remain ongoing.
Yet even the successful passage of a resolution seeking to terminate participation in hostilities in Iran would not necessarily mean the end of the war. While section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution initially gave Congress the power to compel the president to remove U.S. armed forces from ongoing hostilities through a concurrent resolution, the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in INS v. Chadha brought such arrangements into serious constitutional doubt. And while joint resolutions avoid Chadha concerns, they only do so because they are subject to a presidential veto. Trump would almost certainly exercise this option if a joint resolution were to pass, which would in turn require two-thirds support in the House and Senate to override—a threshold that seems likely to remain out of reach.
An ineffective concurrent resolution or vetoed joint resolution might still have some legal weight in demonstrating that a majority of Congress opposes the war. This could in turn help persuade courts that a constitutional impasse exists between the political branches, warranting judicial intervention and heightened scrutiny of contrary executive actions. But until then, the most direct effect of such measures—and the various votes being taken on them—is political, in that the related legislative procedures draw attention to the issue, give legislators a forum for debate, and force members of Congress to take public positions through their votes.
Nor are other, more effective legislative vehicles far off. The Trump administration is expected to request nearly $100 billion in supplemental appropriations to address the massive costs of the Iran conflict before Congress takes its August recess this summer. It’s not yet clear whether congressional Republicans will be able and willing to approve the funding on a simple majority basis through the reconciliation process, as it did with supplemental defense funds included in 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. If not, they will have to secure the support of 60 members of the Senate to overcome a likely filibuster, giving Senate Democrats a major point of leverage (if any are even willing to negotiate about joining the measure). Even if congressional leaders ultimately decide to move the measure forward through reconciliation, it will require the near unanimous support of Senate Republicans, potentially giving some of those with reservations about the Iran war an opportunity to extract concessions. (The nature of those concessions, however, may also be constrained by the reconciliation process if that is how the legislation ultimately moves forward.)
The supplemental appropriations request, if it comes, also won’t be Congress’s last bite at the apple. The Trump administration will also need Congress to enact annual defense authorization and appropriations legislation later this year, and is requesting a massive surge in defense spending to $1.5 trillion. While Congress will almost certainly balk at this full request, whatever authorization and appropriations it does give to the executive branch will be essential to not just the Iran war but a range of other Trump administration priorities. As a result, it will be hard for Trump to veto such legislation, giving Congress the chance to impose statutory restrictions without the supermajority support needed to override such action.
This is where this broader legislative process helps enforce the terms of the War Powers Resolution, albeit indirectly. Violating the 60-day clock gives legislators who might otherwise hesitate to oppose a given war effort—particularly where they are members of the same political party—a neutral, institutional justification for breaking with the president. It also sets a frame of reference that legislators can point to in arguing that the war effort has gone on long enough. Advancing alternative interpretations of the War Powers Resolution and adjusting military operations accordingly may in turn help the executive branch counteract some of these arguments and incentives while still pursuing its strategic objectives.
These points of dissent become particularly important when a military operation proves substantial or extended enough to require additional resources from Congress or overlap with the annual defense legislation process. The agreement or disagreement of members of Congress—and the extent to which they believe the current administration has respected congressional preferences, including those codified through the War Powers Resolution—can have a direct bearing on the types of restrictions that might end up being included in such veto-proof legislation.
What such restrictions might look like in the case of Iran is beyond the scope of this article. But discussions around the Barrett and Murkowski proposals suggest that, even among Republicans, there may be support for prohibitions on the use of ground forces, statutory limits on the scope and duration of hostilities, and the imposition of more oversight and transparency mechanisms. Given other recent controversial actions by the Trump administration, Congress may also wish to consider statutory prohibitions on the use of military force in other problematic ways beyond the Iran context, such as to implement regime change or conquer the territory of an allied country.
That said, peril accompanies this promise. Members of Congress—particularly members of the president’s own party—often find it politically difficult not to fund the military, especially when the United States is engaged in an ongoing armed conflict. Yet both the executive branch and some (but not all) federal judges have sometimes treated appropriations and similar legislation as implied congressional authorization for ongoing military operations. While section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution attempts to bar such an inference, the executive branch has argued that this restriction presents an unconstitutional infringement on the legislative authority of future congresses and can at most establish a rebuttable presumption against such implied authorization. Federal courts have similarly cited such legislation as evidence that Congress has not actively opposed the president’s actions, reducing any perceived constitutional impasse and undermining the case for judicial intervention.
For these reasons, concerned legislators should, at a minimum, insist on language explicitly stating that any more general authorization or appropriations they provide should not be interpreted as implied authorization for any military operations—a step Congress has recently taken in other defense appropriations and authorization legislation. Otherwise, Congress may inadvertently free the Trump administration’s hand instead of restraining it.
Implications for the Iran War
The War Powers Resolution’s 60-day limitation does not operate as the hard cut-off of presidentially initiated military action that its authors may have intended. But the Trump administration’s conspicuous compliance with it—wherein it advances broad interpretations of the War Powers Resolution’s language and adjusts the scope of its military operations accordingly—suggests that it has some effect. The outside risk of litigation and potential for congressional pushback, which are the main mechanisms for enforcing the 60-day limit, give the executive branch ample space to maneuver in the short term. But administrations increase the risk of harder legal consequences as presidents push understandings of the War Powers Resolution and claims of executive authority towards their outer limits.
These risks are likely to be particularly acute in relation to Iran. Simply put, the war in Iran is proving extremely expensive and immensely unpopular, not least because of the devastating impact it is having on the economy. This gives Democrats ample political incentives to oppose the war, including through pushes to limit the president’s power through legislation and possible litigation. Moreover, the Iran war is playing out shortly before a critical midterm election that will determine whether Trump’s own Republican Party will retain control of Congress. Hence, particularly as they move past primaries and begin to look to the general election, Trump’s own co-partisans in Congress have reason to want to see the war wind down and may even see advantages in breaking from him on it. Given the extraordinarily narrow margins by which Republicans currently control the House and Senate, this could readily result in more specific legislative limitations that, if they appear in omnibus legislation the president needs, he will not be in a good position to oppose.
Does this mean that, if the president decides to re-commence major combat operations against Iran tomorrow, that anything will stop him? No. But it does suggest that the longer the Iran war goes on and the more brazenly the Trump administration defies legislative limits such as the War Powers Resolution, the greater the risk that the executive branch will face meaningful institutional pushback.
This in turn presents the Trump administration with a strategic problem. As former intelligence analyst Chip Usher has ably described:
The war between the United States and Iran has settled into a test of wills that neither side can win quickly and neither side can easily quit. Two countdown clocks are running. One is in Tehran, where economic collapse and elite fragmentation are forcing the regime toward concessions it never thought it would have to make. The other is in Washington, where rising gasoline prices, fraying alliances, and a finite stockpile of expensive interceptors are forcing the Trump administration toward decisions it never thought it would have to make. The clocks are running at different speeds—but the gap is narrower than the White House believes. Whichever clock runs out first determines who writes the terms of ending this war.
The intersecting legal and political processes that govern presidential uses of force—and the role the War Powers Resolution plays within them—can be added to the lengthy list of factors putting pressure on the Trump administration as the clock runs down. Bluster aside, the end result may well be that Trump has to accept an end to the war that falls far short of the ambitious objectives his administration set for itself.
