Trump’s airstrikes on Iran were lawful and necessary, says Mike Davis

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran [dead] The religious leader met the death he deserved following the airstrikes announced by President Trump on Saturday morning. A group of Khamenei’s fellow Islamist terrorists in the Iranian government shared the same fate.

Khamenei has never tried to hide his thirst for American blood. Two weeks ago, he made a post on X threatening to sink American ships. He planned to assassinate President Trump ahead of the November 2024 elections and sent an assassination team armed with surface-to-air missiles to US territory.

This forced Trump’s Secret Service team to use fake aircraft.

These are the latest events in Iran’s 47-year war on Islamist terror against the United States. In 1979, Iran took Americans hostage at our embassy in Tehran and tortured them in horrific captivity for 444 days.

In 1983, Iran bombed the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 US military personnel. In 1996, Iran bombed and killed Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. And in 2000, Iran attacked the USS Cole. During the Iraq war, Iran armed terrorist insurgents, who in turn used their weapons to murder and maim hundreds of American soldiers.

Iran has declared war on America and waged war relentlessly for 47 years. But President Trump’s pathological critics insist that his highly surgical and successive operation to eliminate Khamenei and his fellow Islamist terrorists is unlawful; because Article 1 of the US Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, not to the chief executive. As always, the peanut gallery is as inaccurate as it is incompetent.

The U.S. Constitution does indeed give Congress the power to “declare” war, and the Founders were deliberate in their choice of words: James Madison and Founding Father Elbridge Gerry chose it as a substitute for the power to “make” war. Reasons? Leaving “the power to repel sudden attacks to the Executive.”

Or, as Alexander Hamilton explained to Congress in 1801, “When a foreign country declares war on the United States, or openly and publicly declares war, then, in fact, they are already at war, and any declaration of Congress is null and void.”

There is no such thing as a one-sided war.

Iran’s religious leader Ali Khamenei addresses the public on the 47th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, February 9, 2026, Iranian state television reported in Tehran, Iran. (Iranian Leader Press Office/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In contrast, the president, as commander in chief, has the authority (constitutional duty) to repel invasions and protect Americans from attack. This argument did not remain a pure legal theory. Shortly after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States.

Although the Germans had soundly defeated us, FDR did not need to wait for a formal declaration of war from Congress to respond. In 1803, without waiting for Congressional approval, Thomas Jefferson deployed the Navy against Barbary pirates, the predecessors of today’s Iranian Islamic terrorists.

In 1973, Congress attempted to restrict the president’s military authority through the War Powers Resolution. Accepting President Nixon’s veto, the resolution requires presidents to withdraw their troops from war if, after 60 days, Congress does not approve the deployment of troops; This mechanism is called “legislative veto”.

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Every president since Nixon, Democrat or Republican, has rejected the War Powers Resolution as unconstitutional. In 1999, President Clinton launched military action to stop the mass murder of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. In 2011, President Obama deployed the military to overthrow Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi.

In both cases, members of Congress filed lawsuits alleging violations of the War Powers Resolution. They lost in both cases. Now members of Congress who have learned nothing are threatening to do the same thing to President Trump.

If the legislature wants to stop military action, it has legal means to do so. It can make a decision just like any other decision of the congress. He could refuse to fund the military. The concept of a legislative veto was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1983, and for good reason. Our Constitution has drawn a procedure for legislative changes. Members of Congress do not have the opportunity to bypass our system of checks and balances for convenience.

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Last year, our Commander in Chief sent a very clear warning to Iran when Trump disrupted Iran’s nuclear weapons program in Operation Midnight Hammer. The regime did not get the message. President Obama dealt with a recalcitrant Iran by sending pallets of cash to Khamenei. President Trump tackled a stubborn and deadly Iran by sending planeloads of bombs to Khamenei.

President Trump does not need permission from Congress to prevent the next Pearl Harbor. It seems that it is very difficult for Iran’s religious leader to sink American ships when his house has been reduced to rubble and a charred skeleton. Get well soon Ayatollah. And to his advocates in Congress, we are sorry for your loss.

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