On many issues, Americans are deeply polarized. War with Iran isn’t one of them. An Economist/YouGov poll of U.S. adults taken in the days after Israel’s attack last Friday found that Democrats opposed entering the conflict by a margin of 50 points and Republicans opposed entering it by a margin of 30 points.
Given these numbers, you might think Democratic leaders would be doing everything they can to prevent President Trump from striking Iran without the approval of Congress. Sadly, they’re not. More than 20 years ago, powerful Washington Democrats acceded too timidly to a catastrophic Middle Eastern war. Now they’re at risk of doing so again.
From the moment Israel struck Iran, it was obvious the United States might be sucked in. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made it clear he wanted Washington to join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. And on the day of the first attack, when Tehran retaliated by launching missiles at the Jewish state, the United States helped shoot them down.
Despite this, the initial statements by the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, and their House leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said nothing about the need for Congress to authorize war. As the days passed and news reports suggested that Mr. Trump was edging toward entering the fray, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, invoked the War Powers Act to require the president to gain congressional permission. Thomas Massie, a Republican, and Ro Khanna, a Democrat, proposed something similar in the House.
Neither Mr. Schumer nor Mr. Jeffries has signed on. Nor has Mr. Schumer agreed to co-sponsor another bill that Senator Bernie Sanders introduced, prohibiting funding for military force against Iran absent congressional approval (despite backing the same legislation in 2020).
In the meantime, the White House said on Thursday that Mr. Trump would decide within two weeks whether to attack Iran, possibly by ordering U.S. forces to strike Iranian nuclear sites with the 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs that Israel lacks.
Since Democrats are in the minority in both chambers, they can’t force a vote on authorizing war. But Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries could help lead a full-throated public campaign in support of one. They haven’t done that.
In a statement with other senators five days after Israel’s attack, Mr. Schumer finally declared that “by law, the president must consult Congress and seek authorization if he is considering taking the country to war.” But he still isn’t backing legislation to give that principle teeth. And Mr. Jeffries has made no public statements on the subject.
Given the gravity of this moment, Democratic leaders should be holding news conferences, addressing mass protests, even bringing Congress to a standstill with all-night filibusters in order to prevent an unauthorized, unjustified war. The public is deeply weary of conflict. And yet top Democrats are not boldly rallying them against the possibility of another.
This is a serious blunder. It’s a foreign policy blunder because Iran — a corrupt and brutal regime interested primarily in staying in power — poses no more of a direct threat to the United States than Iraq did nearly a quarter-century ago. An American strike on the Islamic republic would probably violate international law and further erode whatever credibility the United States has left when it criticizes Chinese aggression toward Taiwan or Russian aggression toward Ukraine. American intervention in Iran could also fracture the country, as the United States did when it bombed Iraq and Libya — in both cases creating greater dangers than existed before.
In addition, both Republicans and Democrats should realize that yielding the right to authorize war to the president alone has costs that go beyond foreign policy. For at least 50 years, historians have noted that wars expand presidential power. In peacetime, Mr. Trump has had to invent national emergencies to justify his authoritarian power grabs, like sending the Marines to Los Angeles. It’s terrifying to think what he might do if America is actually at war.
The War Powers Resolution, which Mr. Kaine, Mr. Massie and Mr. Khanna are trying to employ, was passed in the waning years of Vietnam, when another lawless president, Richard Nixon, tried to use the cover of war to subvert the Constitution. Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries are their party’s leaders; if they won’t fight for the War Powers Resolution now — when the most lawless president in modern American history is contemplating waging a lawless war — then they’re not serious about defending America’s constitutional order in its moment of peril.
Finally, failing to aggressively defend Congress’s role in authorizing war would be political malpractice for Democrats.
On foreign policy, Mr. Trump has never been more politically vulnerable. In 2016 and 2024, his pledge to keep the United States out of foreign wars proved crucial to his appeal. Now he could be close to breaking that promise, despite clear opposition from Americans of both major parties. And some of his most influential supporters are accusing him of betrayal.
By failing to adequately push back against Mr. Trump, Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries are not only alienating an already alienated Democratic base. They’re squandering a unique opportunity to lure part of the MAGA coalition to their side.
On the 20th anniversary of America’s invasion of Iraq, Mr. Schumer offered something of an apology for supporting that war in 2002. “With the luxury of hindsight,” he said, “it’s clear that the president bungled the war from start to finish and should not have ever been given that benefit.” He pledged to learn from his mistake by “putting the war powers back where they belong — in the hands of Congress.”
Now, with the United States on the verge of what might be its most disastrous military adventure since it toppled Saddam Hussein, it’s time for Mr. Schumer to fulfill that promise. So far, he’s showing that he hasn’t learned much at all.
Peter Beinart is a professor at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York, is an editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter.
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