War With Iran? Not Without Congress.

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

 

I might as well say it clearly: I’m for regime change in Iran.

 

The Islamic fanatics who have been running Iran since 1979 are murderers, torturers, and exporters of terrorism. They are despised, or at least unwanted, by most Iranians, and the Iranians who get caught expressing their opinions in this regard end up jailed, tortured, murdered—or all three. Also, the regime has been an avowed and declared enemy of the United States for decades.

 

That checks a lot of boxes for me.

 

There are only really two major boxes left unchecked, as the Trump administration continues to amass in the region the largest concentration of American military power since the Iraq war.

 

The first: Does the administration have a workable plan? In other words, can it succeed in attaining military victory and securing the country afterward?

 

Nobody—at least nobody outside the administration—has any idea. That’s because if President Trump goes through with a full-scale attack, it will have been the single least-debated voluntary war in living memory, if not ever. The declaration of war on Japan, just one day after the Pearl Harbor attacks, was less debated, but for fairly obvious reasons.

 

The second box to check is related to the first: Congress has not had any hearings about going to war in Iran, never mind authorized a war. And we should be clear, Congress’ failure to greenlight a war doesn’t mean the president is free to launch one. It means, as a constitutional matter, a war would be illegal.

 

Think of it this way: If I don’t have your permission to enter your home and take what I want, we’re not in a gray area. The legal default setting is that you don’t have permission to rob a person unless expressly told otherwise.

 

But my point here is not to write the billionth column on Congress’ abdication of its constitutional role or to do my bit in the war on insomnia by offering yet another tedious discussion of the War Powers Act.

 

Rather, it’s to illustrate a different point: If you are in favor of the constitutional process only when you like the results, you aren’t actually in favor of the Constitution.

 

In the debates over Trump’s rogue presidency, defenders—including Trump himself—will often argue that X needed to be done as a way to sidestep the question of whether Trump had the authority to do X.

 

That’s how much of the debate over Trump’s tariffs, and the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn them, went. Trump says the tariffs are good and important, and therefore the court should allow them. When the justices didn’t have his back, Trump slandered the majority by saying they were “swayed by foreign interests.” He also said they were cowards, unpatriotic, dumb, etc.

 

This is the same president who said, “I have great respect for the Supreme Court” not that long ago. What he respects are enablers.

 

Indeed, I’ve long argued that Trump practices “critical Trump theory,” which holds that any individual or institution that inconveniences the president is objectively bad and malignly motivated. The evidence for hating Trump or being unpatriotic (the same thing in his mind) is not bending to his will.

 

This, too, is not a novel insight.

 

My point is that just because Trump—or any president—is pursuing a policy you support without respect to the rules, it will only be a matter of time before he, or the next president, will pursue policies you don’t support in the same manner.

 

In our system, it’s supposed to be hard, and in some cases impossible, for any one branch of government to do very big things without approval by, and cooperation with, at least one other branch.

 

The two examples mentioned here are among the most important and clear. Congress has the power to tax and to declare war, period (and, yes, tariffs are taxes). The president can’t do either without the permission of Congress. Conversely, the legislature has no ability to fight wars or collect taxes. That’s the executive’s job.

 

I thought—and continue to think—that Trump’s tariff policy is economic nonsense on stilts. So you might expect that I’d come out agreeing with the court’s decision. And I do.

 

But I also think it would be a boon to mankind, especially the Iranian and the American people, if we could get rid of the fanatical Iranian regime (at a tolerable cost in lives and treasure).

 

Even if we assume—and that is a huge if and an even bigger assumption—President Trump can do it right, I still think he can’t do it at all without Congress’ approval.