Trump orders Middle East buildup for potential Iran air campaign

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Would a War Against Iran Be Legal? An Expert Explains time.com

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President Donald Trump is moving the United States toward a potential confrontation with Iran while facing pressure from advisers to prioritise domestic economic concerns—an overlap that makes incentives hard to ignore: when policy bandwidth is limited and legal setbacks mount, foreign “crisis” becomes a way to seize the initiative.

Reuters reports via The Japan Times that Trump has ordered a major US force buildup in the Middle East and preparations for a possible multiweek air campaign against Iran. Yet the administration has not publicly laid out a detailed case for why this escalation is necessary, even as polls show cost-of-living concerns dominate for most Americans ahead of midterm elections.

The legal question is whether the White House can slide from “preparations” to “strikes” without Congress. Time, in an explainer by Rebecca Schneid, notes that presidents have repeatedly relied on broad claims of inherent Article II authority to use force, especially for limited strikes framed as defensive or urgent. The War Powers Resolution is supposed to force notification and a clock on hostilities absent authorisation, but its enforcement is political rather than automatic—meaning presidents often treat it as paperwork, not a constraint.

This is where the institutional dynamics matter. Congress has strong incentives to complain about war powers while avoiding a clean up-or-down vote that would attach accountability. Presidents, in turn, have incentives to pick “limited” options: they offer the appearance of strength with a lower immediate political price than a declared war. But limited strikes create their own game-theory trap: once force is used, the opponent gains incentives to retaliate in ways that raise the cost of backing down, while Washington gains incentives to escalate to avoid looking weak.

Zero Hedge claims the White House is prepared to offer Iran “token” nuclear enrichment to avoid all-out war—suggesting a parallel track of signalling: demonstrate readiness to strike while leaving a narrow diplomatic off-ramp. If accurate, it also highlights the credibility problem: a deal that allows enrichment is politically harder to sell after mobilisation, while mobilisation is harder to justify if concessions are already contemplated.

Trump’s Iran focus also arrives as his domestic agenda absorbs institutional blows, including court limits on tariff authority. A foreign confrontation can function as a political reset: it reframes headlines, rallies coalition factions, and expands executive discretion under the banner of national security. The risk is that the same mechanism that makes crisis attractive to the executive—speed, secrecy, and reduced legislative friction—also makes it difficult to audit mistakes.

For Europe, the implication is not just oil and shipping risk, but Washington externalising costs. A “contained” US strike rarely stays contained for allies asked to provide basing, intelligence, diplomatic cover—or later, reconstruction money. The constitutional ambiguity in Washington is not an internal US quirk; it is a supply chain for wars whose invoices arrive overseas.