Can’t Stop It, So Lead It

The smart political move for Democrats, many will assume, is total opposition to President Trump’s war on Iran.

The war is already nearly as unpopular as the Iraq War was in the worst months of the insurgency, from 2004 to 2006. The current war is also getting bigger and lasting longer than what Trump promised in his optimistic musings. Air power alone has not forced the “unconditional surrender” that he once demanded.

Now the Trump administration is reportedly contemplating an invasion and occupation of the Iranian oil facilities on Kharg Island in the hope of coercing Iran to negotiate. Oil prices have risen and threaten to disrupt global food- and fuel-supply chains. Although the United States and Israel have succeeded in hitting huge numbers of Iranian military targets, the allies seem to have made little progress in upending the Iranian regime.

So if you’re a rational Democratic officeholder, why would you do or say anything to associate yourself with Trump’s Iran war? The president started the war without asking for congressional support and has alienated potential allies across the aisle with crude antics and juvenile insults. He has insisted that his pet voter-ID legislation, the SAVE America Act, which he hopes will help Republicans in this year’s midterms, must take priority over all other business of Congress.

[Nancy A. Youssef: The Iran war has four stages. We’re in the second.]

Worse, Trump will soon have to ask for money. Trump’s war began at a cost of almost $900 million a day, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. At a news conference on March 10, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that a request for a supplemental bill to fund the war is “inevitable.” Given that two House Republicans have already broken with their party in protest over the war, Johnson will likely need Democrats to pass a measure to help fund it. Although the Republican majority in the Senate is larger, Majority Leader John Thune may need Democratic votes too.

Why should any Democrat stick his or her neck out for these reckless architects of an unwanted war? If the war goes well, Trump will claim all of the credit. If the war goes badly, any Democrat who voted with Trump will share the blame.

Yet the political calculus doesn’t end there.

Whatever misgivings Democrats had about attacking Iran, the deed’s been done. In launching this war, Trump has committed not only himself and his administration but also the United States, its regional allies, and the Iranian people. If the war goes wrong, all will suffer.

Some Democrats want to use the power of the purse to end the war “immediately,” but that is like parking a jet in midair. What does “stopping” mean now? Shrug off the danger Gulf states face from retaliatory fire in a fight the U.S. started? End the U.S. air campaign and let Israel fight alone in its own way to achieve its own goals? Leave the mullah regime intact to plot its revenge? “Stopping” is a formula that blinks away every real-world question that Americans now face.

Democrats must instead consider a range of questions, all of which essentially ask: What can they do to limit the danger posed by the Trump administration itself?

The Iranian regime’s usual countermove against the United States is to activate networks of global terrorism. Some Trump allies are reportedly calling for the president to respond by invoking emergency powers to make changes to voting rules, ostensibly to limit foreign interference in the midterm elections. How will lawmakers prevent the Trump administration from exploiting valid concerns about terror networks for bad ends?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that his so-called Department of War is eager to “restore the warrior ethos” to America, with the aim of “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” This blowhard rhetoric seems destined to inspire U.S. forces to commit atrocities overseas. How will Congress oversee the conduct of U.S. military operations so that Hegseth and others don’t incite U.S. forces to commit atrocities?

In Venezuela, the president disregarded democratic-election results to install a compliant replacement dictator. Trump seized Venezuelan oil wealth and stashed hundreds of millions of dollars of it in accounts under murky control. He is now making similar noises about Iran. How will lawmakers ensure that Iranians decide their future for themselves?

Since his reelection in 2024, Trump and his family have accepted or extracted personal gifts and payments from Gulf regimes: a plane from Qatar, a huge secret “investment” from the United Arab Emirates. His son-in-law is soliciting billions of dollars in backing from the Gulf countries that U.S. armed forces are now protecting. Who will make sure that the display of U.S. firepower in the Iran war does not prompt a steady flow of foreign emoluments to America’s baksheesh-seeking president?

[Adam Serwer: The American king goes to war]

Only Congress can do these things—and only the active engagement of Democrats will make sure this happens. The power of the purse is the means to impose Congress’s will. Only by being ready to say yes to funding this war—under the right circumstances, with sufficient guarantees—can Democrats in Congress impose their no where it should be imposed.

The United States is already suffering harms from this autocratically decreed war. To limit those harms and actually gain some benefits, the war will have to be put belatedly on a constitutional footing—and only congressional Democrats can make that happen.