Trump’s Iran War Approaches a Fresh Legal Hurdle

It’s too early to tell what most Republican lawmakers will do if the clock runs out on May 1 and the war against Iran is still ongoing. Some, such as Sen. James Lankford, have argued that it’s too far out to speculate, while others, such as Sen. Susan Collins, have indicated that they would join with Democrats to vote in favor of resolutions ordering an end to the fighting. But it would take just a few Republicans in both the House and the Senate crossing the aisle for resolutions ordering an end to the war to pass and be sent to Trump’s desk.

“I’ve been very clear from the beginning that I consider the 60-day trigger in the War Powers Act to be [severe] and that the president needs to request authorization from Congress to continue hostilities beyond that point, absent some dramatic change or development,” said Collins, who leads the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which plays a major role in determining U.S. military spending levels.

The legal clock established by the War Powers Resolution runs out at the beginning of next month. As there is no sign of Congress moving before then to pass an authorization for use of military force—as was done after the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks as well as in the buildup to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq—hostilities against Tehran are supposed to automatically cease. Trump can extend the military campaign by a further 30 days, but that extension is meant to allow for the safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops, not to continue prosecuting an unauthorized war, according to a 2025 report on the law by the Congressional Research Service.

But roughly a week out from the 60-day deadline, the military situation with Iran is still in flux with little sign of wrapping up soon.

At the White House on Thursday, Trump told reporters that he wouldn’t be pressured by timelines on ending the war.

“Don’t rush me,” the president said. “We were in Vietnam for like 18 years; we were in Iraq for many, many years … we were four-and-a-half, almost five years in World War II. … I’ve been doing this for six weeks.”

Earlier in the day, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the U.S. Navy was controlling access to the Strait of Hormuz and that it was “Sealed up Tight” until a deal with Iran is reached. In a separate post, the president said he had ordered the Navy “to shoot and kill any boat” involved in placing mines in the strait—a crucial international waterway whose closure by Tehran to most shipping traffic has upended global energy and commodity markets.

Trump’s acknowledgment of ongoing hostile Navy activities against Iran is noteworthy because the president has also said that he has indefinitely and unilaterally extended the cease-fire with Iran.

Iranian officials such as top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf have said that the truce can’t be considered to be in effect because the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports represents such a “flagrant breach” of it.

Some legal experts think it’s likely that the White House will try to argue that the cease-fire, which began on April 8, means that the 60-day clock should be considered paused as long as it’s in effect.

“If there are going to be some legal gymnastics, it would be to say that the cease-fire stopped the clock,” said Katherine Yon Ebright, who focuses on the constitutional separation of powers as counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “I think it is very likely that the administration would have lawyers internal to it promulgating interpretations of the War Powers Resolution and this conflict that will say this can go beyond 60 days.”

The 1973 law provided no mechanism for pausing the 60-day clock when a cease-fire is in effect, but that doesn’t mean that the White House won’t still try that approach. After all, previous administrations have gotten creative with how they argued to Congress that monthslong unauthorized military operations weren’t in breach of the 60-day time limit. For example, the Obama administration argued that a 2011 bombing campaign against Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime was of low-enough intensity to not qualify as a covered conflict under the War Powers Resolution.

More recently, the Trump administration asserted in November that its deadly strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific were not covered by the law because they were conducted at such a distance as to not endanger the lives of the U.S. troops carrying them out.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the legal rationales posited by prior administrations that their unauthorized military campaigns were exempted from the 60-day clock, the Iran war is in a different category altogether, Ebright said. “Iran is pretty unambiguously a war with a capital W.”

Many military experts also agree that the Iran war meets the standards of a covered conflict under the 1973 law, even though some Republicans and administration officials have tried to get around that by purposely not using the term “war.”

“I’m calling it a war. We haven’t declared war since World War II. We’ve had plenty of wars since then, right? We all call it war, and everybody in the world calls it war, and historians call it war,” said Mick Mulroy, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the first Trump administration and is now a distinguished military fellow at the Middle East Institute. “They cannot call it a war because they don’t want to trigger the War Powers Act or whatever their purposes are for it, but it is by everybody’s definition a war.”

Though the law doesn’t require Congress to pass a resolution ordering an end to hostilities for any unauthorized conflicts to be required to end after 60 days, it would send an important political message if Congress were to do so, experts said.

After Trump in early 2020 ordered a missile strike that assassinated powerful Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani, Congress passed a resolution under the War Powers Act forbidding further unauthorized military operations against Iran. The measure passed with the support of eight Republican senators, including Collins. Trump vetoed the resolution, though, and Congress lacked the supermajority votes necessary to override it.

“Even if Trump were to veto such a resolution as he did after the Suleimani strike, it would nonetheless be a powerful political single that Congress opposed this, including members of his own party,” said Brian Finucane, a war powers expert who previously worked in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department and is now with the International Crisis Group.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who has shown a degree of independence from the Trump administration when it comes to war powers, said it would be best for all involved if the Iran war ends before the 60-day time limit is reached but that it was also important for the administration to follow the War Powers Resolution.

“The statutory framework is a good one. I appreciate that the administration has been very careful to follow the statutory framework in this conflict,” Hawley said, noting that the law does provide the president with the option to extend the war for 30 days under certain circumstances. “But let’s hope that by 60 days, we’re at an end to this. I think that’d be the best outcome.”

Other Republican senators were more circumspect about sharing their thinking.

“I’m just not going to get into the hypotheticals; there’s too many variables in that,” Lankford said on Tuesday.

Sen. John Kennedy, meanwhile, said he thought too much focus was being given to the 60-day time limit.

“I don’t think the 60 days makes any difference,” Kennedy said. “I understand the law, and I’m not saying it’s a good law or a bad law. I’m just saying that no one that I know of in the Senate is counting down the days and is saying that one second after 60 days, we have to shut everything down and the conflict with Iran is over. I don’t think that is the case.”

John Haltiwanger contributed reporting to this article.