President Donald Trump’s massive and unprovoked attack on Iran is a war of choice, not necessity. He said as much when he declared his objective to be regime change. That’s far beyond destroying Iran’s warmaking capacity.

Trump started a war with no consultation with Congress, let alone the consent the Constitution still requires. He confides more in the Israeli government, his war partner, than in our own.

It would betray the American people, our armed forces and our Constitution for Congress to indulge Trump in this new war.

He claims that diplomatic negotiations failed, that Iran was preparing to attack U.S. interests in the Mideast, that it was close to building a nuclear weapon, and even an ICBM that could reach the United States.

The problem is, Trump has taught us to not believe anything he says.

A monumental tragedy

The greater likelihood is that Israel and Saudi Arabia put him up to it, as some media outlets report.

The war is already disgraced by a monumental tragedy at the outset. The bombing killed not only Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but reportedly at least 153 people at a primary school, including children. There is no conceivable excuse. The U.S. and Israel are experts at precise targeting when they choose to use it.

Regime change, the overthrow of Iran’s government, is a different, far less defensible and much more difficult goal than targeted strikes at Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, which Trump said he had “obliterated” in bombings carried out last summer. Khamenei will not be mourned outside of Iran, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in power.

Iran’s notoriously brutal regime murdered at least 6,000 of its own people during recent protests. It is religious fanaticism in the mailed fist of corrupt fascism, carried out by the leading state sponsor of international terrorism.

That said, there are practical and legal limits to what any democracy such as ours can do about such a place. China and Russia are greater threats to the U.S. in the long term than Iran is now, or could be, and yet Washington doesn’t contemplate regime change against them.

Trump, who promised no more “forever wars,” appears to be clueless about what happens next.

The removal of a leader sometimes changes nothing else. Cuba is still a dictatorship nearly 10 years after Castro’s death. So is Venezuela with Nicolás Maduro in a New York jail, while Trump seems content to do business with his successor.

No end seen, and higher prices

Our nation may be in for a long war.

Trump has conceded that more service members will die. “That’s the way it is,” Trump callously said Sunday.

There are questions about the short supply of our munitions and missile interceptors. Iran has retaliated throughout the Mideast. Gas prices will soar, along with the price of nearly everything else, if the Strait of Hormuz — the passage for 20% of the world’s petroleum products — is closed.

This is all the work of a president who repeatedly promised to do no such thing. In 2016, he declared regime change to be a “proven, absolute failure.” In 2024, he warned that Kamala Harris would “get us into a World War III, guaranteed.” During that presidential campaign, Stephen Miller, JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard all claimed that a vote for Harris was a vote for war with Iran, while a vote for Trump meant peace.

This also isn’t what most MAGA voters expected. Last June, three months before his assassination, the young conservative leader Charlie Kirk warned expressly against attempting regime change in a Mideast country as massive as Iran, which he said would be a “quagmire.”

A convenient distraction

Conveniently for Trump, his new war is a distraction from the Epstein files — and from polls showing him with a dismal 37% approval rating. Oblivious to appearances as always, he began this war from his gilded Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, where he held a fundraiser for his super PAC, reportedly at $1 million a plate, as he sent our troops into danger.

If Congress lets Trump get away with this, it will own what he does next. He has already threatened to take control of state elections without the approval of Congress.

This crisis is summed up best by Alex Vindman, an authentic American hero running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Florida.

Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was a Mideast expert at the National Security Council, acknowledged that Iran’s regime is evil and has “inflicted death and destruction on Americans and our allies” for decades. Vindman himself was wounded by an Iranian-made bomb while serving in Iraq.

But, he added, “Wars without a plan are dangerous.” He warned that “Forever wars drain American strength, put our troops at risk without clear purpose, distract from real strategic priorities and divert resources we should be investing at home.

“The president owes Congress and the American people immediate answers,” Vindman said. “What is the mission? What is the strategy? What is the end state?”

Bipartisan resolutions are pending in both houses of Congress to reign in the White House warmonger. Sponsors want action this week. It’s imperative for Congress to pass them despite a certain Trump veto. Congress needs to take a stand before it’s too late.

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