WASHINGTON—Republican President Donald Trump jumped the U.S. into Israel’s war on Iran, pre-empting lawmakers who are trying to stop his aggression. Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend, striking at the most vital of them with 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs the size of small missiles.
Trump exulted at what he called successes. He also warned in later remarks that Iran must make peace or else be subjected to unspecified “even worse” attacks.
Some lawmakers, led by an unlikely combination of progressives Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and ultra-conservative Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., plan to stop him by invoking the War Powers Act, which Trump and other presidents of both parties have ignored.
Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Netanyahu’s reckless and illegal attacks violate international law and risk igniting a regional war. Congress must make it clear the United States will not be dragged into Netanyahu’s war of choice,” Sanders said.
The War Powers Act says that after a president goes to war, it must end if Congress passes—and the president signs—a joint resolution calling a halt after a maximum of 60 days of combat, with a potential 30-day extension. Congress can also let a war go on by “authorizing a continuation of the commitment.”
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” Trump declared on his Truth Social site. The bunker-busters hit Fordow, which is buried beneath a mountain.
Trump ignores all the criticism now, too—including from negative polls and from the few Republicans, like Massie and even MAGA loyalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recall his prior pledge on last year’s campaign trail of “no more wars.”
CPUSA: “A horrific, criminal act of war”
The Communist Party USA joined the condemnation of Trump’s bombing of Iran, calling it a “horrific, criminal act of war” in a statement issued on Sunday.
“After green-lighting and supplying Israel’s initial wave of attacks, Trump has now illegally ordered the U.S. military to bomb Iran with the alleged aim of eliminating their ability to develop a nuclear weapon,” the CPUSA said.
The party declared the president’s justification for the attack “was clearly a ruse.” It took note of the fact that even the Trump administration’s own intelligence agencies had concluded Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
“The real goals of the U.S. administration are, on the one hand, to support the Netanyahu regime’s military campaigns, beginning with the Gaza genocide, and on the other regime change” to replace the current Iranian government with one that is “subservient to specific U.S. economic, political, and military interests.”
Those interests are, among others, “reinstalling U.S. military bases, severing Iran’s close ties to Russia and China, ending its participation in BRICS and China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and completing its control over the entire Middle East with its vast fossil fuel reserves.” 
The CPUSA also linked the bombing campaign to the domestic drive toward fascist-style government within the U.S., saying the attack is “another example of Trump’s repeated overstepping of constitutional authority.”
Citing the reality of Republican control of Congress and little likelihood of impeachment proceedings against Trump, the party said that mass public protest against the war is an immediate necessity, following on the recent demonstrations of April 5 and June 14. “The time to hit the streets is now,” the party concluded.
War machine
Longtime anti-war Sen. Sanders recalled Netanyahu, a close Trump ally, has launched other wars and that the PM urged Congress to go along. “Netanyahu was wrong regarding the war in Iraq. He is wrong now. We must not get involved in Netanyahu’s war against Iran,” Sanders declared.
Mainstream Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Chicago called Trump’s bombing of Iran “an unambiguous impeachable offense…you don’t do this without congressional approval.”
Unfortunately, Trump follows presidential precedents. Though the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war, it leaves presidents to execute it as commanders-in-chief. But no president since FDR in 1941 has even sought a declaration of war.
The U.S.’s last two major wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, were under “authorizations for the use of military force.” Korea was technically an U.N.-sponsored “peace action.” The war against Vietnam was launched in 1964 by the Tonkin Gulf resolution, which was based on fake evidence of a Vietnamese attack on a U.S. destroyer. Other conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East have been “proxy wars.”
The political rhetoric on all sides obscures the fact that the U.S., including defense contractors, is already heavily involved in the war, on Israel’s side.
Since the start of Israel’s latest war on Gaza was launched in October 2023, estimates of total U.S. military aid to Israel, mostly to buy U.S.-produced arms, start at $14.8 billion and go up to $24 billion. Since the end of World War II, Israel is the #2 recipient of U.S. military aid, trailing only Saudi Arabia.
Military aid to Israel “is a form of corporate welfare not only for the largest weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), Boeing, and General Dynamics, which have seen their stock prices skyrocket, but also for companies not typically seen as part of the weapons industry, such as Caterpillar, Ford, and Toyota,” says the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker anti-war organization.
The anti-war group CodePink said the bombing of Iran was like “Iraq all over again—Illegal. Immoral. Destabilizing.” It demanded an end to the military attack on Iran, a return to diplomacy to revive the Iran nuclear deal, and an end to the weapons profiteering.
Netanyahu launched his war on Iran two weeks ago. Ever since, Iran and Israel have been bombing each other, with almost all the damage—both human and material—in Iran. The Israeli leader seeks war as both a change in policy—to make Israel the Middle East’s regional hegemon—and to preserve his own shaky political position.
At least 55,000 Gazans have been killed by the Israeli military since then. The rest are refugees within Gaza, facing an Israeli blockade of relief supplies and suffering starvation and disease. At least 85% of Gaza’s housing has been destroyed via U.S.-supplied bombs. Israel also drops the bombs on throngs of Palestinian refugees at aid stations.
Anti-war action in Congress
While Sens. Sanders and Tim Kaine, D-Va., are trying to stop Trump by forcing senators to invoke the War Powers Act, the Massie-Khanna effort in the House is picking up support.
Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash)., Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Presley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) are among those joining as co-sponsors.
Whether they will get anywhere is problematic. Republicans control both houses of Congress. Their reflexive support of Israel is not just about presenting an aggressive foreign policy image—it’s also for their own domestic political reasons, to curry favor with Trump’s MAGA supporters and to keep campaign contributions flowing from right-wing corporate interests, including military contractors.
Democrats who dare to speak out risk being bombarded next year by vitriolic political advertising from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a well-funded key element of the right-wing ecosystem. It supports the Israeli government’s right-wing policies, even when the U.S. and Israeli publics don’t.
That hasn’t stopped Sanders, Massie, Khanna, and the others from their campaign to rein in Trump. Virtually all the lawmakers declared Congress, not Trump, has the power to declare war, and must invoke the War Powers Act against him.
“Another war in the Middle East could cost countless lives, waste trillions more dollars and lead to even more deaths, more conflict, and more displacement,” Sanders said.
“The American people have no interest in sending servicemembers to fight another forever war in the Middle East,” said Sen. Kaine.
“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn’t attacked the United States,” said Rep. Massie. “Congress has the sole power to declare war against Iran. The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war. Even if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.”
“No president should be able to bypass Congress’s constitutional authority over matters of war,” Rep. Khanna added. “The American people do not want to be dragged into another disastrous conflict in the Middle East.”
“It is illegal for Donald Trump to drag America into another endless foreign war,” said Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, a union organizer and current Congressional Progressive Caucus chair. “My entire adult life, politicians have promised that new wars in the Middle East would be quick and easy. Then they sent other people’s children to fight and die endlessly. Enough.”
“Trump is trying to drag us into an illegal war with Iran–no debate, no congressional vote,” Garcia of Illinois said. “Military strikes will not bring peace. They will only provoke more violence, destabilize the region, and endanger U.S. troops and civilians,” said Rep. Omar.
“The so-called ‘peacemaker’ president who promised to pull the U.S. out of war on Day 1 has just launched us into a third dangerous war in the Middle East,” said Rep. Jayapal, Casar’s predecessor as Progressive Caucus chair. “Trump’s unconstitutional and escalatory strikes risk drawing U.S. troops and the American people—who are overwhelmingly opposed—into another forever war. Congress must immediately exercise our duty to restrain this president.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both D-N.Y., called for votes on a War Powers Act resolution, with Schumer saying he’d vote for it and urging others to do the same. He also said he’d ask the Senate’s ruling Republicans for an immediate vote after lawmakers return this week. There was no response yet from the Senate’s GOP leaders.
Labor against the war
So far, a check of websites of some leading segments of organized labor has yet to produce any comment—for or against—about Trump’s bombings. Websites checked include the AFL-CIO, the Teachers/AFT, North America’s Building Trades, the Postal Workers, the Service Employees, UAW regions in the Northeast, the city and county labor federations in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, National Nurses United, and the Chicago Teachers Union.
U.S. Labor Against Racism and War, whose members led the AFL-CIO to break with the GOP George W. Bush regime over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars 20 years ago, appears to be defunct.
But one union leader in Boston is out front in providing a strong labor voice in opposition to the bombing of Iran.
“Labor can’t abide by a war with Iran. We have to be able to escalate and fight in an organized but peaceful way against war and against imperialism,” Dave Foley, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 509, declared at an anti-war rally this weekend.
“Labor is the most important in this; we have the people power,” Foley said. “Labor has to get involved in this fight.”
SEIU Local 509 represents 23,000 health and human service workers and educators in the state of Massachusetts.
“The American citizenry, the citizenry of the world, loses in a major escalation in a war with Iran,” Foley warned. He said that “along with horror and death in the Middle East,” the future of the American people is another “cost of the war with Iran,” noting that every dollar spent on weapons is a dollar not spent on human needs like health care, housing, and education.
He encouraged other unions to join the fight for peace. “We have to be louder than we were in 2003,” he said, referring to Bush’s drive for war on Iraq. “We have to be angrier and we have to be more organized.”
C.J. Atkins contributed to this article.
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