Andreas Kluth: The Iran strikes feel like 2003 all over again

Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg Opinion on Mar 2, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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Less than a year ago, President Donald Trump gave a speech in the Middle East in which he excoriated his predecessors for their habit of launching “forever wars” in that region. Alluding to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 in particular, he accused them of “intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” with the result that they “wrecked far more nations than they built.”

And here is Trump now, intervening in a complex society that he does not understand: “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” he told the Iranian people in announcing the start of what appears to be a massive, indeed maximalist, U.S.-Israeli campaign against the regime in Tehran. The Iranians are already returning fire, shooting at targets linked to America across the Gulf region.

This is not a surgical and limited strike like Operation Midnight Hammer in June. This is war with both barrels, unpredictable and possibly uncontrollable. “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties; that often happens in war,” Trump conceded in announcing the attack. Has he just launched the latest American forever war, the exact kind that he promised his own MAGA base to end and avoid?

The differences and similarities between 2026 and 2003 are eerie. Then as now, American intervention was ostensibly, but not really, about weapons of mass destruction — Iraq turned out not to have them, and Iran doesn’t have them now. (The U.S. says it “obliterated” its nuclear facilities, although it’s unclear whether the regime could rebuild the covert program.)

Then as now, the actual war aims are unclear and shifting. As even American conservatives are saying, “it was never about nuclear weapons, it was never about helping the Iranian people, and Iran was genuinely negotiating a diplomatic solution.”

Some of the differences make the attack of 2026 look worse, posted Michael McFaul, a veteran diplomat at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. George W. Bush didn’t get authorization from the United Nations Security Council to invade Iraq in 2003 but at least he tried, whereas Trump didn’t even do that. And Bush did get authorization from Congress, whereas Trump has not. (He merely sent his national security adviser, Marco Rubio, to notify eight congressional leaders that something big was coming.) Not least, Bush in 2003 went to war with a “coalition of the willing” that included more than 40 countries; Trump is attacking with the support of precisely one ally: Israel.

What happens next is unclear. The regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei knows its fight is existential and will give it all it’s got. Moreover, as overwhelming as American air power may be, history suggests that regime change — much less, nation-building — without ground forces is hard if not impossible. And Trump wants to avoid putting boots on the ground, because he knows his MAGA base won’t stand for it.

If ever history demanded that Congress reclaim its constitutional monopoly in declaring war, that moment is now. Democrats and disappointingly few Republicans — Senator Rand Paul deserves honorable mention — already tried and failed to revive the Nixon-era War Powers Resolution in the run-up to Trump’s extraction of the Venezuelan dictator in January. They will try again this coming week.

For the sake of the founding fathers, for the sake of the American republic, for the sake of the Middle East and the world, America’s legislators must not let this president turn Congress into a rubber-stamp parliament again. Trump has not made his case to the public: Just as it was not enough in 2003 to assert that Saddam Hussein was evil, it is not enough now to remind the world that Iran’s regime is “wicked.” The authority to launch war, and certainly a potential forever war, does not lie with him. It lies with Congress.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.