Trump’s escalating threats against Iran, including his latest call for Iran's “unconditional surrender" and the possibility of killing its supreme leader, have strongly suggested that the United States may be headed into another Middle East war.
On Tuesday, Trump held an emergency meeting with his national security team to discuss whether the US should join Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites,—specifically by using bunker-busting weapons that only the US can deliver, as reported by US media.
During the meeting, which lasted nearly 90 minutes, Trump and his advisers were reported to have discussed the possibility of using 30,000-pound “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” guided bombs to destroy Iran’s nuclear plant at Fordo, which is entombed below several hundred feet of concrete in a mountain.
However, US media reported that the president's advisers are still divided on the move, which experts say would "completely change" the conflict.
US and Israeli media said Trump followed the meeting with a call to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is not known what was discussed.
In recent days, at least 30 US military tanker aircraft—used for refueling fighter jets and bombers—have been deployed to Europe, amid Washington's repositioning of aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel from Iranian attacks.
Iran, meanwhile, warned that an American intervention in the ongoing Israeli strikes targeting its country would spark “an all-out war.”
“I think any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region with very, very bad consequences for the whole international community,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei Kani told Al Jazeera English on Wednesday.
War powers debate
As the White House weighs military action, a political debate is unfolding in Congress over the limits of presidential war powers.
In the House, representatives Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, and Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, introduced on Tuesday a resolution requiring congressional approval before U.S. troops could engage in offensive attacks against Iran.
A similar resolution was introduced Monday in the Senate by Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Debating the bill on the floor of the Senate, Senator Kaine warned that if the US were to fight against Iran, it would be the third war that the US has fought in the Middle East since 2001.
He said that such a war with Iran would be a " catastrophic blunder for this country" and would lead to widespread attacks on US bases in the Middle East.
However, both resolutions face long odds in Congress given Republicans’ reluctance to constrain Trump's authority. Still, with some lawmakers in both parties openly resisting further US involvement, the measures are expected to spark vigorous debate, according to The New York Times.
The measures enjoy a special status that will force Congress to vote on them in the coming days, the NY Times said.
“Anyone who is cheerleading the United States into a war with Iran has very quickly forgotten the disasters of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war,” Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.
The Connecticut Democrat recalled those conflicts “became a quagmire that ultimately got thousands of Americans killed and created new insurgencies against US interests and our allies in the region.”
The so-called War Powers Resolution says that Trump cannot engage in "unauthorised" strikes against Iran without getting approval from Congress first.
However, as the Axios news website explains, the War Powers Resolutions are more symbolic than substantive.
Axios argued that even if one cleared the Senate, it would still need to pass the GOP-controlled House. And Trump would almost certainly veto it, requiring an override vote in both chambers.
While Congress has not formally declared war since World War II, it has granted former presidents the authority to use military force through various authorizations, most notably after the 11 September 2001 attacks. Those authorizations laid the groundwork for wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and later the US-led campaign against ISIS in 2014.
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