Donald Trump can’t leave Iran. He also can’t continue in Iran. So we are told.
Is he hopeless against Iran? Against a country which is left with no leaders, no weapons, no money. A country which can’t defend its sky. A nation which is losing 500 million dollars a day; whose currency (rial) was trading at 75 before war and is now 1.3 million per greenback note. When Tehran is left with no oil storage and closing oil wells would amount to losing them forever?
Can’t Trump continue in Iran? Well if Trump could declare he is taking out one particular gas pipeline on Monday at 6.00 in the morning and a bridge on Tuesday noon and Iran could only watch them go, he sure can continue at will. I mean how many lives America has lost? 13. The only strategy Iran is left with is delay, delay and delay. This is no strategy. This is no victory. It’s not even running on fumes.
May be Tehran was hoping that US Congress would strap Trump on a leash after 60 days for that’s when a president has to submit for an approval to continue the war. Only minutes before the deadline passed, Trump declared the war has been terminated. Congress now can’t make a call on something which is over. End of story.
How many times the US Congress has used the 1973 War Powers Resolution to end a “misadventure” by a president after the deadline of 60 days has passed? Zero.
How many times a US president has snared Congress into a wordplay to get what he wanted? One remembers Barack Obama did it with Libya – “Operations” don’t constitute “hostilities—Clinton did it with Kosovo, and later with Somalia. Biden’s stance was that Ukraine was engaged in war with Russia and the US itself were not engaged in hostilities.
And where’s the clarity that a ceasefire of last four weeks counts towards 60 days or is outside of it by definition?
It only gets more absurd: A resolution by Congress is not enough. It needs a signature from the President, the very person whose “operations” it has voted against! Is the President obliged to honour Congress stance? Hardly. In 2019 Trump himself vetoed a Yemen resolution and Congress lacked the teeth to override him.
So in essence it’s coming down to just a dressing down in spirt and letter by the Congress against the President but it doesn’t translate into a stricture, a binding. It’s like we propose that government vehicles henceforth won’t carry the sirens and those who do would be levied with a Rs 100 fine.
Donald Trump is one who calls a spade a spade. On countless occasions, he has termed this War Powers Resolution resting with Congress as unconstitutional. Scholars of the charter don’t disagree.
This time his letter to Congress ahead of expiry of 60-days limit mentioned “My constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive..” It was a challenge to Congress to dare defy the constitution which puts the President squarely in charge of both military and foreign policy.
In other words, Congress can’t set war deadlines or have the mandate in military affairs.
Now what happens that Trump, having “terminated” the war, restarts it in coming days? Does it mean yet another cycle of 60-day duration? Nobody knows. Such a scenario has never been referred to the Supreme Court. Let’s presume that the Congress does decide to invoke the Supreme Court’s good offices. But what really it could rail against when it remains beyond doubt that foreign affairs and military matters rest with the President?
This being so, don’t lose breath over screaming headlines you see in newspapers. They amount to zilch. They are meant to emotionally agitate so you lose the perspective, rationality and thus are malleable to propaganda. A calm head will allow you to see things clearly: That Iran is desperate to have a deal which gives them some narrative to sell to its audience. It’s in no position to sustain itself economically for long and that it could ill afford another round of destruction of its infrastructure which already has been set back by a decade or two.
