Trump says he doesn’t want to call Iran conflict a “war” because of need for approval from Congress

President Trump suggested Wednesday evening that he was avoiding describing the military conflict with Iran as a “war” due to concerns that Congress had not authorized military force.

“I won’t use the word ‘war’ because they say if you use the word war, maybe it’s not a good thing to do,” the president said at an event for the House Republicans’ fundraising arm. “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval, so I’ll use the word ‘military operation,’ which is really what it is.”

The president has avoided the term in the past, saying Tuesday that “people don’t like it when I use the word ‘war,’ so I won’t, but Democrats call it a war.” Earlier this month, he told reporters he viewed the conflict as “an excursion that will keep us away from a war.” He also often claimed that the war in Iran was a short-term conflict that he believed would end soon.

But Mr. Trump still sometimes called it a war, including during his speech on Wednesday night, when he said: “The war basically ended within days of us entering.”

Behind this semantic question lies a legal question: Did the president need congressional approval to launch military strikes against Iran last month?

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but it makes the president commander in chief of the armed forces. The War Powers Act of the 1970s generally limits military hostilities to 60 days unless Congress authorizes the use of military force, although presidents of both parties have tested the law’s limits. Mr. Trump argued that the law was unconstitutional.

Democratic lawmakers argued that Mr. Trump acted without legal authority by launching strikes against Iran without first seeking authorization from Congress, and questioned whether Iran posed an “imminent” threat to the United States.

Since the start of the war, Senate Democrats have held three votes aimed at ending the U.S. offensive in Iran unless Congress allows it to continue, but those votes failed mainly because of Republican opposition. In the most recent vote On Tuesday, all Democrats except Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted in favor of limiting Mr. Trump’s war powers in Iran, and all Republicans except Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. I voted against.

“I don’t think we’ve had a moment like this, where the United States is unquestionably at war with a foreign power, where American soldiers are dying as we speak, and this is being actively hidden from the public by Congress,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who sponsored the war powers resolution, said before Tuesday’s procedural vote.

The Trump administration and most Republicans say the war is legally and constitutionally justified because of the threat posed by Iranian missiles. In a notification to Congress after the operation began, Mr. Trump said he “acted pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to direct the foreign relations of the United States.”

“Despite my Administration’s repeated efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution to Iran’s malign behavior, the threat against the United States and its allies and partners has become untenable,” Mr. Trump wrote in the memo.

Several congressional Republicans echoed Mr. Trump’s word choices. House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference shortly after the United States and Israel began striking Iran: “We are not at war right now. We are four days into a very specific and clear mission.”

This is not the first time that a military operation has sparked a war of words. When former President Barack Obama launched airstrikes against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, his administration argued that it did not need congressional authorization. At the time, officials were investigating whether the strikes constituted “war.”

“I think what we’re doing is implementing a resolution that has a very clear set of objectives, which are to protect the Libyan people, to avert a humanitarian crisis and to establish a no-fly zone,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters in 2011, referring to a U.N. Security Council resolution. “Obviously, that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front lines. But again, the nature of our commitment is that we are not engaging in an unlimited war, a ground invasion into Libya.”