“So the power of Congress was limited to declaring war, not to making war…Making war is a broader power.”
Alan Dershowitz appeared on Newsmax Thursday to discuss Donald Trump and his strategy to delay deciding whether to strike Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement Thursday in which Trump announced he will decide within the next two weeks whether to involve the U.S. directly in the Israel-Iran war. During an appearance on “The Record with Greta Van Susteren,” Dershowitz said the delay is designed to increase pressure on Iran. This decision, Dershowitz added, highlights why it is necessary to grant the president the authority to make such calls.
“What do you think President Trump’s strategy is by postponing for two weeks his decision whether to bomb Fordow? It’s to put pressure on the other side,” Dershowitz said.
Dershowitz also discussed the constitutional debate over presidential authority in matters of war.
“If you don’t do this in two weeks, I’m going to go to Congress. I know there are people in Congress who are opposed to this, Republicans and Democrats. It would eliminate the ability of the president to effectuate foreign policy and military policy by threats. That would particularly affect President Trump, who is the threatening president, the deal-making president,” Dershowitz added.
Dershowitz said Congress, not the judiciary, plays the key role shaping U.S. foreign policy decisions like this one. The current balance of power between the branches, particularly in military matters, often limits judicial challenges to these executive decisions.
“I think this two-week thing is a perfect example of why it’s necessary to give the president the kind of authority he has. If we were rewriting the Constitution today, I think we would be giving the president probably more authority to engage in warfare,” Dershowitz said. “Remember, the original formulation of Article I didn’t say Congress has the power to declare war. It said Congress has the power to make war. And that was amended. And so the power of Congress was limited to declaring war, not to making war.”
Dershowitz added that even in the early days of the U.S. government, people debated over how to allocate the responsibility for warfare between the executive and legislative branches.
“Making war is a broader power. So even back then, there was some dispute about how to allocate the responsibility for warfare between the two branches of government. The one branch of government that has no role to play is the judiciary,” Dershowitz said. “And that’s why it’s very hard to get a challenge to Article I, Article II conflicts.”
Earlier on Wednesday, defense experts said the U.S. might possess the only weapon capable of destroying Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility, a weapon never before used in combat. As Israel intensifies its strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, the Fordow uranium enrichment facility remains intact.
Military analysts say only the U.S.-developed Massive Ordnance Penetrator can destroy the facility. Israel has already launched hundreds of airstrikes against Iran, reportedly targeting key parts of the Natanz enrichment facility and eliminating top military officials and numerous nuclear scientists.
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Four-star general reveals why Iran’s Ayatollah isn’t cutting peace deal as Trump’s countdown begins
Iran isn’t cutting a US-brokered peace deal with Israel because its leaders are confident they can rebuild its nuclear program even if it’s wiped out, a retired general says.
General Jack Keane, the former Vice Chief of Staff to the US Army, told Fox News that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei believes the country will be able to restart its hydrogen bomb with relative ease after the ongoing conflict with Israel ends.
The US has not joined the conflict. President Trump says he’ll decide whether to do so in the next two weeks, after urging Iran to halt its nuclear bomb building.
‘The nuclear enterprise is vast, and it is resilient,’ Keane told Fox News. ‘(There are) multiple sites, centrifuges, so you can spin up enriched uranium.
‘They did that to survive.’
Keane said the Ayatollah has ‘never made a deal’ because ‘he has built an enterprise to survive an attack’ that he believes is strong enough to withstand airstrikes even if President Trump decides to join the conflict.
‘He believes they can absorb an attack, survive it, recover from it, and then rebuild. That is where this guy is,’ he said.
‘I don’t see him, in the near term, making a deal here whatsoever.’
General Jack Keane, the former Vice Chief of Staff to the US Army, has predicted that Iran won’t cut a peace deal within President Trump’s two-week deadline
The retired four-star general spoke as the Israel – Iran conflict stretched into its eighth day, amid fears that the US could be dragged into the war. Pictured: An Israeli attack on Tehran, Iran on June 18
Keane, a four star general, was likely referring to Iran’s nuclear bomb factory, which is called Fordow and which sits deep under a mountain.
The United States’ most powerful ‘bunker buster’ bomb has been touted as a possible match for the Fordow facility, if President Trump decides to join the conflict at the end of a two week deadline he’s just announced.
Other experts believe a tactical nuclear weapon would be needed. Using a nuclear bomb in an act of war is a huge taboo unbroken since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The general said for Trump to succeed, he needs to ‘take the whole enterprise down’ and wipe out the nation’s top leadership and military capabilities, after Israel significantly weakened Iran in recent weeks.
‘Look, Israel have destroyed all 70 of their air defense batteries, all of them. Air force, gone. The 12 nuclear sites, damages or destroyed. Then, leadership (is) decapitated, military and nuclear scientists. They can replace nuclear scientists, but in the near term, major problem.’
Iran has long vowed to obliterate Israel at the first chance it gets, with Israeli intelligence beginning their bombing campaign earlier this month over fears leaders in Tehran were just months off completing a nuclear weapon.
World leaders and many military strategists have urged Trump to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis, fearing that any direct US intervention could spiral into all-out war.
Trump has warned that if Iran don’t agree to stop their nuclear weapons program within two weeks, he will commit US forces to join Israel in the conflict.
Iran’s allies include Russia and China, meaning the stakes for the current conflict could not be higher.
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