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The 60-day fiction: Why the War Powers clock doesn’t bind the president in Iran

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by Thomas Beck, opinion contributor - 05/06/26 9:30 AM ET

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by Thomas Beck, opinion contributor - 05/06/26 9:30 AM ET

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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters during a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Washington, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine listen. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Many Democrats in Congress, and recently even some Republicans, have said May 1 marked a legal 60-day deadline by which President Trump must either obtain congressional authorization for continued military action in Iran or withdraw U.S. forces. They’re incorrect.

When Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution of 1973, it authorized a president to commit military forces into “hostilities” abroad for up to 60 days. At that point, the president must “terminate” the engagement unless Congress has expressly authorized it.

May 1 marked the 60-day deadline for Trump’s military action in Iran. The 60-day deadline is a legislative aspiration by which Congress pre-emptively sought to limit a president’s judgment as the constitutional commander in chief. As a matter of constitutional law, it does not bind the president, and it is particularly misplaced in the current conflict with Iran.

Article II of the Constitution makes Trump the commander in chief. Once U.S. forces are engaged in armed conflict, the Constitution assigns to the president, not Congress, responsibility for determining strategy, directing operations, and deciding when and how hostilities should conclude. The Constitution gives Congress formidable tools — most notably the power of the purse and ultimately impeachment — to rein in a president who exceeds his brief, but Congress has no business imposing arbitrary deadlines on the conduct of military operations.

Presidential practice underscores the point. Richard Nixon vetoed the War Powers Resolution on the grounds it would impose “unconstitutional and dangerous” restrictions on the president’s authority. Similarly, his successors have rejected the 60-day deadline. During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, President Clinton continued operations well beyond 60 days without a specific authorization. In the Libya intervention of 2011, President Obama exceeded the 60-day period, arguing that a military air campaign in another nation did not constitute “hostilities.”

Proponents of the 60-day deadline in Iran might have a leg to stand on if Trump’s Iran intervention had no justification in the first place. But Trump is exercising his inherent authority as commander in chief to respond to decades of Iranian aggression against the U.S.

It began in 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. The new government of Iran, under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, endorsed this hostage-taking, gained de facto control over the hostages, and held them for a period that ultimately extended to 444 days while using them as leverage in negotiations with the U.S.

In 1983, Iran provided material support for Islamic Jihad’s deadly attack on the U.S. embassy in Lebanon and for Hezbollah’s attack on the U.S. Marine barracks that killed hundreds of Americans. In 1996, Iran backed the militants who bombed Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel.

During the Iraq War, Iran routinely provided training and financial support to Shia militias seeking to kill Americans, as well as advanced explosives that killed and maimed American troops. In 2020, Iran launched ballistic missiles at bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq.

Iran’s actions leave no doubt that it is and has been at war with the U.S. Its rhetoric confirms the proposition. Ever since the 1979 revolution that brought them to power, Iran’s theocratic despots have denounced America as the “Great Satan.” At rallies organized by the government, the favorite chant is “Death to America.”

Although the Constitution reserves to Congress the power “to declare war,” this does not require the president to wait for congressional authorization before responding to attacks like those levied by Iran.

The Supreme Court recognized this principle in The Prize Cases, a Civil War-era decision that remains fundamental to the president’s constitutional role as commander in chief. The court upheld President Abraham Lincoln’s blockade of Southern ports, even though Congress had not declared war. The court explained that when the U.S. homeland is attacked, “the President is not only authorized b