With Congress unable
to rein in President Donald Trump’s war against Iran through legislative action, a group advocating for diplomacy filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration arguing the military action violates the Constitution.
National Iranian American Council Action on Thursday filed its suit in a Washington federal court asking a judge to declare the war on Iran illegal on the basis that it violates the Declare War Clause of the Constitution.
“Can one person decide, on his own, to keep an entire nation at war?”
“No President should have the power to take this country into an indefinite war by himself,” NIAC President Jamal Abdi said in a statement. “Congress never authorized this war. Yet Iranian families are being bombed, American service members have been killed, and communities on both sides are being forced to bear the consequences. This lawsuit asks a fundamental question: Can one person decide, on his own, to keep an entire nation at war?”
The lawsuit was filed as the Senate prepared to vote on a resolution seeking to stop the war. A floor vote on
the resolution
, which already
passed
the House of Representatives, failed in the upper chamber Thursday afternoon after senators shot it down in a 49–50 split.
“We’ve unfortunately seen this Congress fail its job of standing up for their constitutional role as the sole body empowered to declare war,” Abdi told The Intercept. “That’s why we are pursuing every option at our disposal, including taking the challenge against this unconstitutional war to the courts.”
Both the Senate vote and NIAC Action’s lawsuit took on new urgency after Trump used his United Nations General Assembly speech on Tuesday to threaten to “
annihilate
” Iran, a country of 90 million people.
“When Trump is threatening annihilation of another country in a war of aggression,” Abdi said, “it is all hands on deck to stop this full-blown constitutional crisis before it gets worse.”
The White House did not immediat
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