General Motors introduced the Corvette, NBC broadcast the Academy Awards for the first time and Queen Elizabeth II assumed the throne.
The year was 1953. That year the CIA, working with British Intelligence, orchestrated the overthrow of democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. In so doing, they restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. Why? Because the new democracy chose to nationalize what is now BP, and the Shah was perceived as friendly to western interests.
That was our original sin in Iran. Everything subsequent followed that illegitimate act:
- The 1979 Islamic Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, overthrew the Shah. The Iranian hostage crisis followed (as well as Reagan’s alleged “October Surprise”which was revealed minutes after his inauguration);
- The Iran-Contra Affair (secretly selling arms to Iran) while Reagan supported Iraqin its war with Iran (1981-1988);
- In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 civilians on board. Reagan did not apologize but Clinton compensated Iran and the families in 1996;
- Trump withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018;
- Trump assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020;
- Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025; and
- Trump launched a full-scale war of choice in partnership with Israel in February 2026, without Congressional authorization. This war of choice is illegal under international and US law.
Trump went to war at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been crying wolf about Iran’s nuclear program since the early 1990s. For more than 30 years, Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that Iran will be able to deploy nuclear weapons in “years,” “months,” and at times “weeks.” For example, in his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism, he asserted that Iran was three to five years from nuclear capability.
Trump mimics those claims, which are contradicted by US intelligence. For example, a week before the strike, Trump’s Iranian envoy Steve Witkoff falsely told Fox News that Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial grade bomb making material.”
Do Americans and Israelis support this war of choice that is based on lies? Americans do not; Israelis do.
History is patient. It does not forget 1953, and it will not forget 2026. The decisions this Congress makes determine what history records. Was this a war the American people authorized, with clear purpose, full cost, and defined measures of success? Or was it a war of choice, waged by one man at the request of another, that a co-equal branch of government watched happen in silence?
The Constitution is unambiguous: the power to declare war belongs to the legislative branch. Every day Congress fails to act — to either authorize this war or end it — it cements the precedent that a president alone may take us to war. That precedent will outlast this war, this president, and this Congress. Future presidents, of both parties, will use it. The cost will be measured not only in dollars and lives, but in the constitutional order itself.
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