Trump Launches War on Iran Without Congress in 'Operation Epic Fury'

A War Begun in the Middle of the Night

At 2:30 a.m. Eastern on February 28, 2026, Donald Trump released an eight-minute video on Truth Social informing the American public that the United States was at war with Iran. By that point, U.S. and Israeli forces had already executed nearly 900 strikes inside Iran in roughly 12 hours, hitting missile production facilities, air defenses, military installations, and the homes of senior leadership. B-2 stealth bombers, B-1 Lancers, and B-52 Stratofortresses dropped bunker-busters on hardened sites including the Fordow and Natanz enrichment complexes. The administration code-named the campaign “Operation Epic Fury.” Israel’s parallel operation was called “Roaring Lion.”

The opening salvo killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in an Israeli strike, along with dozens of senior Iranian officials. It also killed roughly 170 civilians when an errant missile hit a girls’ school next to a naval base in Minab, near Bandar Abbas. By March 3, U.S. and Israeli strikes had destroyed the Supreme National Security Council headquarters, the Expediency Discernment Council building in Tehran, and an underground nuclear facility Israeli officials called Min Zadai.

In his Truth Social video, Trump did not announce a discrete strike or a punitive operation. He effectively announced regime change.

No Vote, No Declaration, No Authorization

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. The 1973 War Powers Resolution requires the president to obtain congressional authorization within 60 days of introducing American forces into hostilities. Trump did neither.

The administration formally notified Congress of the conflict on March 2, starting the statutory clock. That clock ran out at the beginning of May. On May 1, with the 60-day deadline hitting, Trump sent letters to Congress asserting that authorization was unnecessary because he had ordered a “two-week ceasefire” on April 7 that had since been extended, and therefore “hostilities” had “terminated.” The Senate had already attempted six separate votes to compel authorization. All six failed. Maine Republican Susan Collins broke with her party on the final attempt, telling colleagues that “the Constitution gives Congress an essential role in decisions of war and peace.”

Trump told reporters he considered the War Powers Act itself “unconstitutional.” That is not a legal argument any prior administration of either party has accepted, and it has no support in the text or history of the resolution. It is, instead, the same posture Trump has taken toward every constraint on executive power: the law does not apply to him because he says it does not.

A “Ceasefire” That Wasn’t

The “termination” Trump declared in his May 1 letter was a fiction crafted to evade the statute. Iran had retaliated against U.S. bases and U.S.-allied Gulf states. Iran had mined and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, stranding nearly 23,000 sailors from 87 countries. The U.S. Navy was conducting an active blockade of Iranian ports. Within four days of Trump’s letter, the United States launched Project Freedom, a new combat operation in the Strait involving 15,000 service members and more than 100 aircraft, before Trump paused it and threatened to bomb Iran “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.” None of that is consistent with “terminated” hostilities.

The Pattern: A Constraint Is Just an Obstacle

The Iran war is the largest U.S. military commitment since 2003 and the only one in living memory begun without any vote of Congress, any allied coalition resolution, and any prior public debate. It is, by any constitutional measure, Trump’s personal war. The same president who promised in his 2024 campaign to “end forever wars” launched the most consequential one in two decades, then refused to seek the authorization the law plainly requires, then declared the law itself unconstitutional when it produced an inconvenient deadline.

The constitutional claim Trump is asserting — that a sitting president can wage a 38-day bombing campaign against a sovereign country, kill its head of state, blockade its ports, and unilaterally decide that none of the statutory checks on warmaking apply to him — is not a policy disagreement. It is a claim of monarchical power dressed up in legal vocabulary. And by routinely accepting it, Congress has surrendered its single most consequential constitutional authority.