Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran [dead] supreme leader, has met his well-deserved demise following a barrage of airstrikes announced by President Trump Saturday morning. A slew of Khamenei’s fellow Islamic terrorists in the Iranian government have met the same fate.
Khamenei has never tried to hide his thirst for American blood. Two weeks ago he posted a message on X threatening to sink American ships. He plotted to assassinate President Trump before the November 2024 election, deploying a hit squad on US soil armed with surface-to-air missiles.
This forced Trump’s Secret Service team to use a decoy plane.
A screenshot of a video released on President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account shows Trump making statements about combat operations in Iran on February 28, 2026. in Palm Beach, Florida. (US President Trump via Truth Social/Anadolu via Getty Images)
These are just the latest incidents in Iran’s 47-year Islamic terrorist war against the US. In 1979, Iran took American hostages in our embassy in Tehran and tortured them for 444 days in disgusting captivity.
In 1983, Iran bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. service members. In 1996, Iran bombed and killed Americans in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. And in 2000, Iran attacked the USS Cole. During the Iraq War, Iran armed terrorist insurgents, who then used their weapons to massacre and maim hundreds of American troops.
Iran has declared war on America for 47 years – and has waged it relentlessly. Yet President Trump’s pathological critics now insist that his highly surgical and sequential operation to eliminate Khamenei and his fellow Islamic terrorists was unlawful because Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. As usual, the peanut gallery is as incorrect as it is worthless.
The U.S. Constitution does grant Congress the power to “declare” war, and the Founders were deliberate in their choice of words: James Madison and Founding Father Elbridge Gerry chose it as a substitute for the power to “make” war. Their rationale? To “leave to the executive the power to repel sudden attacks.”
Or as Alexander Hamilton explained to Congress in 1801, “If any foreign nation declares or makes open and open war against the United States, they are actually already at war, and any declaration on the part of Congress is useless.”
There is no such thing as a one-sided war.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei addresses the crowd on the 47th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, according to Iranian state television in Tehran, Iran, February 9, 2026. (Iranian News Agency Leader/Anadolu via Getty Images)
In turn, the president, as commander in chief, has the authority—the constitutional duty—to repel invasions and defend Americans from attack. This argument has not remained just a legal theory. Shortly after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States.
Although the Germans were ahead of us, FDR did not have to wait for a formal declaration of war from Congress to strike back. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson deployed the Navy against the Barbary pirates, the forerunners of today’s Iranian Islamist terrorists, without waiting for congressional approval.
In 1973, Congress attempted to curb presidential military authority through the War Powers Resolution. The resolution overrides President Nixon’s veto and requires presidents to withdraw troops from combat if Congress has not ratified their deployment after 60 days, a mechanism called a “legislative veto.”
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Every president since Nixon, whether Democrat or Republican, has dismissed the War Powers Resolution as unconstitutional. In 1999, President Clinton took military action to stop the mass killings of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. In 2011, President Obama deployed the military to eliminate Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi.
In both cases, members of Congress filed suit alleging violations of the War Powers Resolution. In both cases they lost. Having learned nothing, members of Congress are threatening to do the same to President Trump.
If the legislature wants to stop military action, it has legal options to do so. It could pass a resolution like any other act of Congress. It could refuse to fund the military. The entire concept of the legislative veto was rejected by the Supreme Court in 1983, and for good reason. Our Constitution has set out a procedure for changing the law. Members of Congress should not conveniently circumvent our system of checks and balances.
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Last year, our Commander-in-Chief sent Iran a crystal-clear warning when Trump crippled Iran’s nuclear weapons program with Operation Midnight Hammer. The regime did not get the message. President Obama tackled stubborn Iran by sending Khamenei pallets of cash. President Trump has dealt with a stubborn and deadly Iran by sending Khamenei planeloads of bombs.
President Trump does not need congressional approval to prevent the next Pearl Harbor. It turns out that it’s hard for Iran’s supreme leader to sink American ships when his house is in ruins and he’s turning into a charred skeleton. Good riddance, Ayatollah. And to his defenders in Congress: I’m sorry for your loss.
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