The June 2025 Strikes on Iran and the War Powers Question Congress Left Open

The bombers took off from Missouri. On the evening of June 21, 2025, Washington time, which was already the early hours of June 22 in Iran, American B-2 stealth bombers dropped the heaviest conventional bombs in the American arsenal, the 30,000-pound bunker-busters known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators, on the uranium enrichment site at Fordow, built deep inside a mountain, and on the enrichment complex at Natanz. Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a submarine struck facilities at Isfahan. It was the first time the United States had directly attacked Iran's nuclear program, and it came more than a week into an air war that Israel had begun on June 13. President Trump addressed the nation from the White House that night and said the sites had been destroyed. Some congressional leaders were notified, most only shortly beforehand. Nobody had asked Congress to vote. Six days later, on June 27, the Senate did vote, on a resolution from Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia that would have required congressional approval before further hostilities against Iran. It failed, 47 to 53. That vote settled what would happen next. It did not settle the question underneath it.

In short: The June 2025 strikes were ordered on the President's own authority, without a congressional declaration or authorization. The Senate rejected a war powers resolution days later, largely along party lines. The legal question of how far a president can go on his own against another country's territory remains unresolved and keeps coming back.

The road to Fordow

The strikes did not come out of nowhere, and the background matters for judging them.

Iran's nuclear program had been the subject of diplomacy, sanctions and sabotage for two decades. In 2015, Iran, the United States and other major powers reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which limited Iran's enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, during his first term, Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, arguing it was too weak and too temporary. Iran responded over the following years by expanding enrichment well beyond the deal's limits, including to levels close to weapons grade, while insisting its program was peaceful.

In the spring of 2025 the Trump administration held talks with Iran on a new arrangement. On June 12, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency found Iran in breach of its safeguards obligations for the first time in about two decades. The next day, Israel launched a broad air campaign against Iranian nuclear sites, military commanders and scientists. Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in return. The question in Washington became whether the United States would join, particularly against Fordow, which Israel lacked the bombs and aircraft to reach.

Inside Congress, members of both parties had been saying for days that any American attack should come to them first. Others argued that the President needed freedom to act quickly and that a public debate would only warn Tehran. Trump said publicly that he would decide within two weeks. He acted two days later.

What happened after the bombs

Iran's response was limited and, by its own design, telegraphed. On June 23 it fired missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts American forces, after giving warning. Qatar's air defences intercepted most of them and no one was reported killed. That evening Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, which took effect the next day after a final exchange of fire.

The human cost of the twelve days was real on both sides. Israeli strikes killed hundreds of people in Iran, many of them civilians according to Iranian authorities and independent rights monitors, and Iranian missiles killed civilians in Israeli cities. Those deaths deserve to be counted in any judgment of the war, and they belong to people, not to governments.

The effect on the nuclear program became a political argument of its own. The administration insisted the sites had been obliterated. A preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, described in press reports, suggested the program had been set back by months rather than years; the administration rejected that reading and pointed to other assessments describing severe damage. What happened to Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and whether inspectors could verify it, remained a central question afterward.

The legal argument the administration made

Under the War Powers Resolution, the President must report to Congress within 48 hours when forces are introduced into hostilities. Trump did, sending a letter that described the strikes as limited in scope and purpose. The letter relied on the President's authority under Article II of the Constitution as commander in chief and chief executive.

That position has a long pedigree in the executive branch. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, under administrations of both parties, has developed a two-part test for when the President may use force without Congress: the operation must serve important national interests, and its anticipated nature, scope and duration must fall short of a "war" in the constitutional sense. The office used versions of that test to support the 2011 air campaign in Libya under President Obama and strikes in Syria in 2017 and 2018 under Trump.

Supporters of the June strikes made the strongest version of the case. The operation was a single night. It targeted facilities, not cities. It aimed to stop a country whose leaders had long called for Israel's destruction from acquiring weapons that would make that threat existential. Secrecy was essential to protect the aircrews, and a public debate in Congress would have warned Iran. Presidents have ordered limited strikes without authorization for decades.

The argument on the other side

Critics, including Kaine, many Democrats and a smaller number of Republicans such as Senator Rand Paul and Representative Thomas Massie, answered on several levels.

First, the Constitution. The framers gave Congress the power to declare war precisely because the decision to attack another country is the gravest a government can make. A deliberate attack on the territory of a sovereign nation of about 90 million people, in the middle of its war with a neighbour, is hard to describe as anything less than an act of war, however brief the bombing run. The executive branch's "nature, scope and duration" test is a theory the executive wrote for itself; no court has endorsed it.

Second, the facts. The War Powers Resolution recognizes the President's power to respond to an attack on the United States. Iran had not attacked the United States. To the extent the strikes were framed as helping defend Israel, that is a claim about international law; it says nothing about which branch of the American government decides to go to war.

Third, the risk. A single night of strikes can lead to retaliation against American troops in the region, attacks on shipping, and a wider war, none of which the President controls once the first bomb falls. That risk is exactly why the decision belongs to Congress.

And fourth, the time. The administration had been weighing the strikes for days, and the crisis had been building for years. There was no surprise attack to repel. There was time to ask.

I find the critics' case stronger, and I think it would be equally strong under a Democratic president. That is the test of whether it is an argument about the Constitution or about the man in office.

The June 27 vote

Kaine's resolution was privileged under the War Powers Resolution, which meant he could force a vote. It would have directed the removal of American forces from hostilities against Iran unless Congress declared war or passed a specific authorization, while preserving the President's power to defend the country against imminent attack.

The vote broke largely along party lines. Paul was the only Republican to vote yes. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote no. Some senators who voted against it argued that the ceasefire made it moot, or that it would tie the President's hands while Iran remained dangerous. Supporters answered that a resolution requiring Congress's consent for future hostilities was never more relevant than in the days after the country had begun them.

In the House, Massie and Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, introduced their own bipartisan war powers resolution before the strikes. After the ceasefire, it did not come to a vote.

Kaine had forced similar votes before. In 2020, after the killing of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, both chambers passed his resolution on Iran hostilities with support from some Republicans; Trump vetoed it. The June 2025 result showed how the politics had shifted.

Congress insists on a say over deals, not over bombs

There is an irony in the history of Congress and Iran that the June vote brought into focus.

In 2015, while the Obama administration was negotiating the nuclear agreement, Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. The law required the President to submit any nuclear agreement with Iran to Congress, gave Congress a period to review it, and barred sanctions relief during that review. It passed the Senate 98 to 1. Members of both parties said, with feeling, that a matter as serious as Iran's nuclear program could not be handled by the executive branch alone.

Ten years later, the same Congress, many of the same senators among it, declined to insist on a say before the United States bombed the very facilities that agreement had been designed to restrict. Congress, in other words, had asserted a right to review diplomacy and then passed on the chance to approve force.

There are explanations. Reviewing a deal is a vote on something already negotiated, with time to study it. Authorizing a strike means taking responsibility for an operation that might go wrong. Members of the President's party did not want to constrain him in the middle of a crisis, and some members of the other party were not eager to be seen protecting Iran's nuclear sites. Voting is risky; letting the President act and judging afterward is safe.

But the asymmetry is hard to defend on principle. If an agreement to limit a program needs Congress's review, an attack on that program, with its risks of war, retaliation against American troops and lasting consequences in the region, needs it at least as much.

What a real answer from Congress would look like

The critics' case is stronger when it comes with a workable alternative, so it is worth spelling out what Congress could do short of tying the President's hands in a genuine emergency.

It could write into law the circumstances in which a president may use force without prior approval: to repel an attack on the United States, its territories or its armed forces; to rescue Americans in imminent danger; and little else. It could define "hostilities" so that air and missile strikes on another country's territory plainly count, closing the argument that a single night of bombing is too small to trigger the War Powers Resolution. It could require that, outside a true emergency, the President seek authorization before such a strike, with expedited procedures so that Congress has to vote within days, not months. And it could provide for classified consultation with a small group of congressional leaders when secrecy is essential, as it already does for covert action.

None of these ideas is new. Versions have appeared in bipartisan bills for years. What they have lacked is not drafting but will.

The question Congress left open

What Congress declined to answer in June 2025 is simple to put and hard to resolve: can a president, without congressional approval, launch a deliberate attack on the territory of a country that has not attacked the United States, so long as he says it will be brief?

If the answer is yes, then the Constitution's assignment of war powers to Congress applies only to long ground wars, and the most consequential decisions, the ones that start wars, belong to one person. If the answer is no, then Congress must be willing to say so, before the fact, in law.

Progressives should be honest that this is a bipartisan failure. Democratic presidents have relied on the same executive theories, and Democratic majorities have often preferred not to vote. The coalition that has actually pushed war powers votes to the floor in recent years has included progressive Democrats, libertarian Republicans and a few others from both parties. That coalition is the most promising place to build a fix.

The confrontation with Iran did not end with the June ceasefire, and readers following events since should look to our Pentagon and militarism page for current coverage. The constitutional questions are tracked on our democracy and the rule of law page. Prediction markets on conflicts are on our predictions page; remember that those are forecasts, not verdicts.

What you can do

• Find out how your senators voted. Recorded Senate and House votes, including war powers resolutions, are on the Congress votes and bills page. Then enter your address at find your representatives for their phone numbers and contact forms, and tell them where you stand.
• Ask for a vote before the next strike, not after. When you call, ask a specific question: will they support legislation requiring congressional authorization for attacks on another country's territory except to repel an attack on the United States?
• Look for allies across the aisle. The common-ground page shows bills both parties passed together, a good place to see which members have worked across party lines.