War Powers

How Democrats Can Stop the Iran War Now

Congress has some options for constraining the president’s war-making powers. Will it use them?

Matthew Petti | 11.4.2026 3:00 AM

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(Ron Sachs - CNP for NY Post/Newscom/U.S. CentCom)

The year is 2006. Democrats have swept the midterm congressional elections after a Republican administration launched an unpopular war in a Middle Eastern country. But the opposition pulls its punches and is unable to assert Congress' check on the president. The year is 2026. Democrats have swept the midterm congressional elections after a Republican administration launched an unpopular war in a Middle Eastern country. What will happen next? 

Despite President Donald Trump's insistence that his "excursion" to Iran would be nothing like the invasion of Iraq, the domestic politics are looking quite similar. Both the failures of the war itself and the economic damage caused by setting an oil-rich region on fire became major political liabilities for the president's party. Exit polling shows that 62 percent of voters consider the war a mistake and 74 percent considered it a major factor in their votes. Some of the newly elected Democrats were upstarts who had ridden the wave of antiwar sentiment in the primaries to beat establishment favorites seen as complicit with the war.

"If it is still around next term, on day one, Democrats will pass a bill to end the Iran war," Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.) told The New Republic in July 2026.

Translating that popular mandate into policy is easier said than done. Trump has shown multiple times that the president can simply veto or ignore war powers resolutions from Congress demanding an end to the war. Congress' only direct leverage is over the military budget—and threatening to withhold it is itself a politically risky maneuver, as newly elected lawmakers discovered after the 2006 elections. Party leadership that is willing to attack Republicans' execution of the war may not share a principled antiwar commitment.

"I had serious misgivings about the decision of this administration to go forward and still do. But it comes down to this. We have to decide whether or not we will provide the funds necessary to support the men and women in uniform…I don't support a precipitous withdrawal," Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) told NPR in May 2006, a few months before the midterms. He is still the Senate Democratic whip today.

Of course, there are important differences between now and then. The Iraq War was popular from the beginning and took some time to become unpopular, while the Iran war is the first U.S.........

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