Trump’s Illegal War With Iran
Public Citizen News / March-April 2026
By Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert
This article appeared in the March/April 2026 edition of Public Citizen News. Download the full edition here.
On Feb. 28, President Donald Trump initiated a deadly and unconstitutional regime-change war against Iran.
We immediately denounced the military operation. We pointed out that:
- There was no congressional declaration of war nor authorization for the use of force in Iran, making Trump’s actions transparently unconstitutional and illegal.
- Even with congressional approval, Trump’s actions in Iran would violate international law.
- Iran poses no imminent security threat to the United States.
- Exactly like the Iraq war that Trump claimed to oppose, this is a war of choice driven by arrogance and imperial ambition.
- And exactly like the Iraq war, the risks are manifold — with needless short-term deaths inevitable and long-term consequences unknowable.
We sought an immediate end to the war, urging Congress to pass a War Powers Resolution to force an end to hostilities. Although the vote failed, a surge of grassroots pressure and the incoherence of the Trump administration’s justification) led nearly every congressional Democrat to support the resolution.
Immediately following the close votes on the War Powers Resolutions, we switched gears and began campaigning to block Congress from approving new funding for the war.
With a bumbling Trump advocating for an expanded and protracted war in Iran, halting new funding is crucial to prevent a repeat of the Iraq war and the death and destruction it wrought.
This work on Iran war funding – very much ongoing as Public Citizen News goes to press — flows directly from our longstanding People Over Pentagon campaign, which aims to reduce Pentagon spending and reallocate it to priority human needs. Even before the war, Trump had announced plans to seek a staggering $500 billion annual increase in Pentagon spending, a financial commitment that would starve funding for non-military priorities.
Working to end an unconstitutional war reflects another reality as well: Conducting a war is inherently in tension with operating a robust democracy in the best of times. When an autocratic leader foments war on pretextual and bad-faith grounds, the threats to democracy are far more grave.
- The war is already further concentrating power in the executive and undermining the constitutional separation of powers. Trump has barely nodded to Congress’s sole constitutional authority to declare war. For an administration that is pushing extremist theories of inherent executive authority, the war – and Congress’s failure to assert its constitutional authority – is a gift.
- War is frequently used to justify expanded domestic surveillance operations. It was 9/11 that brought us the Patriot Act and the modern system of domestic surveillance. If the war persists, we should not be surprised by demands for enhanced surveillance powers – or the regime unilaterally implementing stepped-up surveillance programs.
- War paves the way for attacks on civil society, suppression of civil liberties, and targeting of disfavored minorities. Even before the start of the Iran war, the Trump administration had unleashed an out-control paramilitary ICE gang targeting immigrants; arrested political enemies on fanciful charges; and threatened to crack down on groups it claimed supported “domestic terrorism.” If the war is prolonged, we should expect to see repressive measures intensify. And already Republicans are saying the war necessitates unlocking funding for the Department of Homeland Security, monies currently on hold because Republicans refuse to agree to modest reforms to stop some of ICE and Customs and Border Protection’s unconstitutional and immoral practices.
Overall, war puts the nation on emergency footing, justifying the subordination of democratic practices and protections. It generates demands for rally-around-the-flag fidelity, with dissent characterized as support for the enemy. It normalizes secrecy and lying to the public (admittedly, this was already a defining feature of the Trump presidency). And it demands that the other branches of government defer to the executive in the name of national security.
If the war persists, all of this is poised to exacerbate the worst and most dangerous features of the Trump autocracy. And, with worries high about how Trump may seek to undermine the November elections, war footing and alleged national security risks may provide a pretext for the most aggressive election sabotage schemes.
Against all this, there is but one thing to do: Ensure that Americans exercise their rights and refuse to be intimidated. One advantage we have compared to prior war situations is that the Trump administration’s military aggression is overwhelmingly unpopular from the outset. With strong majorities opposing the war, it is harder for the administration to denigrate and repress its opposition – all the more so if we vigorously oppose the war and the entirety of Trump’s authoritarian project. That’s exactly what we aim to do.