DeGraaf: The War Powers Resolution doesn’t require ignoring Iran’s record

By Rep. Ken DeGraaf | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Democrats continue to blame President Trump for elevated energy prices. The data show a more complicated picture. National average gasoline prices under the current administration remain below the peak reached under President Biden in June 2022, when the average briefly exceeded $5 per gallon. Even after the 2026 Hormuz disruptions, recent averages in the $4.30–$4.40 range sit below that high. Inflation-adjusted comparisons and the temporary suppression of prices from the large 2022 Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) drawdown further complicate the narrative.

That drawdown, the largest in the reserve’s history, reduced stocks by roughly 180 million barrels and left the SPR at multi-decade lows entering 2026. A portion of the released oil was purchased by foreign buyers, including Chinese state-linked firms. The temporary market effect of those sales is now gone, while the reserve’s reduced capacity remains a constraint.

A significant driver of current prices is Iranian action in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials have stated that attacks on shipping are intended to keep oil prices high and influence the U.S. midterm elections. The regime has conducted repeated strikes on commercial vessels, laid mines, and, according to U.S. Treasury statements, operated schemes that effectively extract payments for “safe” passage through a waterway it does not own.

These actions did not begin on February 28, 2026. For years before the current conflict, Iranian forces and Iranian-backed proxies conducted attacks, seizures, and harassment against commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, and Red Sea. The Washington Institute’s maritime attack tracking documents hundreds of such incidents since 2017. Houthi forces, armed and directed by Iran, attacked more than 100 merchant ships after October 2023, sinking several and killing at least eight seafarers before 2026. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) units seized tankers, conducted unsafe approaches, and launched drone and missile attacks. These actions killed and injured seafarers and demonstrated a consistent pattern of aggression against neutral commerce.

A recent exchange on social media highlighted a familiar pattern: questions about executive action under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 paired with accusations of constitutional contempt, while the underlying facts of the threat receive less scrutiny. I have great respect for our constitutional republic. We have not always lived up to its ideals. That does not change the legal and practical framework for addressing imminent threats or the record of policies that helped create them.

But the main thing I’d like to address here is the War Powers Resolution and continual Democrat assertions that the war was illegal and that we should just continue to allow the homicidal zealots to inflict their thousand cuts.

The War Powers Resolution allows a president to introduce U.S. forces into hostilities in limited circumstances, including a national emergency created by an attack on the United States, its territories, or its armed forces, or situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated. Section 4 requires reporting to Congress within 48 hours in such cases. Historical committee language has treated “imminent hostilities” broadly enough to cover a clear and present danger of armed conflict even before shots are fired. Article II authority to repel sudden or imminent attacks is long recognized.

These are not blank checks, nor are they invitations to ignore facts on the ground.

Those facts include Iran’s nuclear trajectory. Before facilities at Natanz and Fordow were struck, Iran had accumulated roughly 441 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent—far beyond the 3–5 percent needed for civilian power reactors and well above the roughly 20 percent used for research reactors. Independent assessments and the International Atomic Energy Agency have stated there is no justifiable non-military purpose for enrichment to 60 percent. That stockpile, if further enriched, contained enough material for multiple weapons. Pre-strike breakout estimates to produce enough weapons-grade material for a first device were measured in days to a week or two. Engineering challenges for a deliverable weapon remained, but the fissile-material gap had narrowed dramatically.

Iran has not confined its ambitions to uranium or slogans. It has funded, trained, and equipped a network of proxies—Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias—responsible for attacks on shipping, regional infrastructure, and civilians, including the October 7, 2023 massacre. In 2026, Iranian forces and proxies targeted commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, used drones and projectiles against neighboring energy facilities, and contributed to disruptions that affected global energy markets. The regime has also demonstrated its internal priorities by killing thousands of its own citizens for demanding basic freedoms.

The pattern is global: proxy campaigns that produce American and allied deaths over years, combined with direct IRGC operations against shipping and U.S. bases.

Previous U.S. policy choices accelerated these developments. The release of substantial frozen assets and the structure of the 2015 nuclear agreement provided resources and breathing room that Tehran directed toward ballistic missiles, regional proxies, and enrichment capacity rather than restraint. Democrat leaders across multiple administrations have themselves described Iran as a destabilizing force, a state sponsor of terrorism, and a threat to U.S. personnel, allies, and interests—while noting that military options remained available if diplomacy failed. Those assessments did not disappear when the current administration acted.

“As I said during the campaign, President Bush was right that Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat.” – Barack Obama (September 17, 2009 remarks on missile defense in Europe)

“[A]s president of the United States, I don’t bluff… both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.” – Barack Obama (March 2012 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic)

“As someone who does firmly believe that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon… the choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war.” – Barack Obama (August 5, 2015 speech at American University on the Iran nuclear deal)

“Let us be clear: Iran is not only a threat to Israel; Iran is also a threat to American personnel in the region, American interests, and innocent civilians across the region who suffer at the hands of Iran-based and -backed terrorist proxies.” – Kamala Harris (October 1, 2024 statement after Iran launched approximately 200 ballistic missiles at Israel)

“I am clear-eyed: Iran is a destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East… I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist militias.” – Kamala Harris (same October 1, 2024 statement)

“The only thing worse than the Iran that exists now is the Iran with nuclear weapons.” – Joe Biden (July 2022 interview with Israel’s Channel 12, where he said he would use force to stop an Iranian bomb “if that was the last resort”)

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” – Hillary Clinton (April 22, 2008 responding to a hypothetical question about the U.S. response if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel)

Critics of the War Powers Resolution itself raise substantial structural points that deserve a clear answer. The statute’s 60-to-90-day clock has, in practice, functioned less as a hard deadline forcing withdrawal than as a statutory window during which presidents of both parties have conducted sustained operations without prior specific authorization. The law contains no meaningful enforcement mechanism; courts have repeatedly declined to adjudicate such disputes under the political-question doctrine, and the legislative-veto mechanism originally contemplated was invalidated by the Supreme Court in INS v. Chadha.

Key terms such as “hostilities” remain undefined, allowing administrations to argue that limited airstrikes, drone campaigns, or naval escorts fall outside the statute’s triggers. In this sense, the Resolution has often operated as a less-binding overlay on the Constitution’s clear assignment of the power to declare war to Congress, rather than as a reliable check.

These flaws are not theoretical. The Obama administration’s 2011 Libya intervention provides the clearest modern precedent. Despite an air campaign lasting well beyond 60 days, the administration asserted that U.S. forces were not engaged in “hostilities” within the meaning of the Resolution because the risk to American personnel was low and the mission was limited to supporting a NATO operation. Many Democrats in Congress and the press praised the action as a successful exercise of humanitarian intervention and executive initiative.

The same statutory ambiguities and lack of enforcement that critics now highlight were available then; they simply drew less objection when the policy aligned with preferred outcomes.

The constitutional practice of defending American commerce without a formal declaration of war is older still. When the Barbary States seized American shipping and demanded tribute, Thomas Jefferson dispatched naval forces under Article II authority to protect commerce. Commanders adapted heavy ships to asymmetric threats. Contemporary operations against Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz follow a similar logic: defensive action against a regime that has attacked neutral commerce, killed seafarers, and sought to raise energy costs for the United States and its partners.

The 2026 campaign against Iranian nuclear and military targets occurred against documented enrichment progress, institutionalized hostility, kinetic attacks on shipping that have killed seafarers and raised energy prices, proxy campaigns that predated the strikes, and prior policy choices that expanded Tehran’s capacity. Reporting and operational timelines under the War Powers Resolution provide the statutory mechanism for congressional oversight. They do not require ignoring an advancing nuclear stockpile, repeated attacks on international commerce, or decades of explicit hostile rhetoric.

Reasonable people can and should debate the duration, scope, and diplomatic off-ramps of any military action. That debate is stronger when it starts from the same set of facts: the technical status of Iran’s enrichment program, the documented activities of its proxy network, the human-rights record of the regime, the actual text and history of the War Powers Resolution, and the consistent pattern of its application across administrations.

Selective outrage at the statute’s long-standing structural weaknesses does not strengthen constitutional governance. Confronting real threats while insisting on clearer congressional authorization going forward does.

Rep. Ken DeGraaf represents House District 22 in northeast Colorado Springs and has served in the Colorado House since 2023. He is a 27-year U.S. Air Force veteran and pilot, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, holds a master’s in structural dynamics from Columbia University, and is a graduate of the USAF Air War College.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.