While President Trump cast the opening salvo against Iran as an act of defence—insisting the strikes were necessary “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”—the scale of what followed shattered any claim of limited protection.

The world awoke not only to the martyrdom of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but to a region in flames. Tehran stands scarred by smoke and fire. In retaliation for the US–Israeli assault, ballistic missiles and drones have crossed the Arabian Peninsula, striking across Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Air defenses have been activated over Doha and Abu Dhabi. Civil aviation has been disrupted. What was presented in Washington as defensive necessity has already metastasized into a widening Middle Eastern war.

Trump’s own language reveals the scale of ambition. He has vowed to “destroy their missiles,” “raze their missile industry to the ground,” and “annihilate the navy,” promising Iran’s military capacity will be “totally…obliterated.” That is not the vocabulary of neutralising a discrete threat. It is the language of dismantling a sovereign state’s strategic infrastructure.

Under American law, that distinction is decisive.

The American Constitution assigns the power to declare war to Congress. The president serves as commander in chief once war is authorized. The framers separated these roles deliberately. They understood how swiftly executive urgency can become executive war. By........

© Middle East Monitor