Only five days in, it’s increasingly clear the Iran war is a disaster in the making, both politically for President Donald Trump, and in tangible, human terms for the country.
It’s also increasingly clear that the president miscalculated with his decision to launch the war — and knows it. We can glean this from his reportedly instant and unsuccessful outreach for a ceasefire, his and his officials’ shifting timelines and justifications for the war, and their efforts to now publicly pawn responsibility for it off onto Israel. Trump’s public statements do not suggest a coherent plan for what comes next, from the contradictory visions of regime change he has laid out and his admission that his day one decapitation strike sabotaged his own plans to strike a deal with a successor, to his barefaced denial that the U.S. munitions needed to fight the war are rapidly dwindling.
Trump has effectively put himself into a trap. On the one hand, Iran is determined to inflict pain on the United States and refuses to negotiate again, which means he cannot easily pull out without both personally looking weak and making the United States as a whole appear to have suffered a defeat. On the other hand, the longer the war goes on, the more Americans will die, the more the economy comes under strain, and the greater the likelihood that he is pressured into the politically toxic move of sending in ground troops or otherwise escalating U.S. involvement.
In other words, to salvage his presidency in a year where many Republicans’ political futures are tied to his, Trump needs a way out of the war that will let him save face while also letting the Iranians claim a victory. This week’s War Powers Resolution vote offers exactly this chance.
Republicans should vote for the War Powers Resolution being pushed by the bipartisan team of Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) in the House and by Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) in the Senate—which, if it passes, would halt continuing U.S. involvement in the war. They don’t need to do it because passing the resolution is objectively in the best interests of the country and the world, though it would be. They only need to think about their own naked self-interest.
Republicans generally don’t want to appear to be opposing Trump on big votes because of the fear of the political costs associated with doing so. But in this case, they would be saving the president from himself and safeguarding their own survival in the coming midterms.
Congress finally reasserting its Constitutional war-making authority would give the president a clean exit strategy from the no-win situation he’s placed himself into. Trump could tell the world he would have kept fighting and eventually won the war, but that Congress has tied his hands and that he must abide by the Constitution and cease combat operations. While Iranian leadership is currently bent on fighting, a sudden U.S. exit, however it is justified, would offer them a way out, too. Iran could be satisfied in the fact that it inflicted a significant blow against the United States and Israel, and that it exacted real political costs that have credibly reestablished its deterrence.
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Other than potentially irking the president, there is little to no political risk to doing this. In fact, there is much more political risk in not doing it. Two-thirds of Americans are already opposed to the war, and U.S. wars don’t tend to become more popular the longer they go on. The proportion of Americans opposing the war will only grow as the American public feels more and more of the economic fallout, learns about fallen U.S. servicemembers, or watches ground troops being deployed—and that will include so-far loyal Republican voters.
If Republicans in Congress are still worried about the possible backlash of appearing to oppose Trump, they could do what Democrats just did to pass continuing ICE funding in the face of opposition from their voters, and decide on just enough Republicans to be the “rotating villains” needed to put the measure over the line. The White House, for its part, would be wise to simply let this happen and avoid whipping votes against the measure.
Trump built his political brand and his 2024 victory on opposing more U.S. wars, having recognized that Americans were tired of watching their country get sucked into wasteful conflicts that had little to do with them, and how these kinds of foolish adventures had destroyed presidencies that came before his. His betrayal of that promise represents arguably the greatest political risk he has faced in his two terms. This week’s War Powers Resolution vote may be the last, best chance to give both him and the country a clean way out of the looming disaster.
