A legal expert flagged a "cynical" reason why President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. to coordinate strikes against Iran on early Saturday morning.
Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard University, argued in a new Substack essay on Saturday that Trump's decision to strike Iran alongside Israel came down to a handful of factors. One of the most important is that "there are no effective legal limitations within the executive branch" that would prevent Trump from ordering the strikes. At the same time, Congress has largely ceded its authority to hold Trump accountable for such actions, he argued.
"I’m praying for U.S. troops and for everyone involved, and hoping for the best," Goldsmith wrote. "But it is hard to be optimistic given the terrible U.S. record with violent military disruptions and regime changes in and around the Middle East in my lifetime. Maybe this time will be different."
The U.S. and Israel coordinated attacks against multiple sites in Iran on early Saturday morning. Israel struck multiple sites where Iran's military and political leadership were located, an operation that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dictator who has ruled the country since 1989. The U.S. struck Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile facilities.
Goldsmith also noted that the debates about Trump's legal authority are largely "empty." Instead, those debates serve to deflect attention away from the people who refused to restrain Trump.
"My point is that the rhetoric of legal constraint, and debates about the legality of presidential uses of force, are empty," he continued. "And they deflect attention from Congress’s constitutional responsibility to exercise its political judgment and the political powers that the framers undoubtedly gave it to question, to hold to account, and (should it so choose) to constrain presidential uses of force."