A War in Which Everyone Loses: Trump Attacks Iran Without Congressional Approval

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

War on Iraq, War on Gaza, War on Lebanon, War on Iran

The storm was predicted. Everyone was waiting for it to arrive. Huge rollers crashed like missiles against the sea defences of Beirut’s Corniche, foaming back out in a hiss of foam across the flat rocks where the day before many idle men had bathed and baked despite Israeli air attacks just kilometres to the south in the Dahiya, the southern Shiite suburbs.

I had found myself seated in a golden armchair in the Iraqi Embassy on Rue Farid Trad, named after the entrepreneurial Lebanese architect. It was the 22nd anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and it was also Newroz, New Year, 2025 for Kurds and Persians. The Embassy was staffed by Iraqi Shi’as unlike when it was struck by a suicide bomber linked to Iran-backed al-Da’wa on December 15, 1982 1.

A staffer encased in hijab told me that this was the same site where ‘diplomatic people had been killed’ and the new Iraqi government rebuilt there just eight years ago after having rented accommodation in Beirut following the US invasion of 21 March 2003.

The rain falls heavily and my shoes squelch: the Iraqi Consulate entrance was flooded and the men manning the security booth were reluctant to open the metal gate to my banging on it to be let in. After reminding the consular staff of the significance of the date, I asked for an audience with the Embassy.

I was guided through the zig zag heart of the consulate through a door to the outside and then crossed the short back stretch of unpaved garden to the Embassy itself, which as when bombed in 1982, faces towards the Corniche at Ramlet el-Bayda from the district of UNESCO.

Ramlet el-Bayda is the last remaining public beach in Beirut where the sewage from the nearby Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp is discharged straight into the sea. I had visited Mar Elias the day before and the narrow lanes of the ‘camp’ reeked of untreated waste.

The camp was originally built there in a pine forest that was part of a Christian area – but of this virtually nothing remains. It is now surrounded by high rise buildings that emphasise the contrast between the haves and have-nots. Israeli fighter jets continued to menace the air space overhead despite the ‘ceasefire’ with Hezbollah.

The following day the Israelis recommenced bombing just four miles away against heavily blitzed targets in the southern suburbs. I went there to see. Devastation greeted me.

The rain fell in a thick veil as the wind tossed the fronds of the palm trees. Black smoke from bombs looked like the trails from so many warships of old. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 and once again the regional conflagration was spreading with each passing week encompassing many of the same old players and several new ones.

Escalation encompasses Iran

Just three months on, Israel began to attack targets in Iran (while shooting starving Palestinians queuing for food aid in Gaza and further inroads into the West Bank) Donald Trump, the feckless US president just five months into his second term launched bunker buster bombs at Iran’s nuclear facilities aborting negotiations and supporting his ally, Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Saturday 21 June, the US struck Iran without the approval of Congress. Middle East Monitor reported: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump “failed to seek congressional authorization for the use of military force and risks American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East.” 2

Threat to international shipping and commercial marine transport

The Yemeni Shi’a Houthi spokesman, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti vowed afresh to abandon their ceasefire with the United States because Trump had weighed in unilaterally and attacked Iran. 3

Shipping was again threatened in the Gulf and potentially in the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranian Parliament approved a decision to close the Strait, Press TV reported. 4 The measure now falls to the Supreme National Security Council for implementation. 20% of the world’s oil and gas passes through the Strait. It is the primary export route for Gulf producers Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait. Oil prices are likely to rise even without the closure of the Strait. 5

The Coordination Framework, the Iran-backed Shi’a militias in Iraq and the Sadrists

The pro-Iran Iraqi Shi’a militias long opposed to the persisting American presence in their country had already declared that if the US attacked Iran in support of Israel’s war, American bases would be targeted in Iraq and elsewhere. 6

On June 14, the Iraqi government submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations Security Council, accusing Israel of violating Iraqi sovereignty by using its airspace to carry out strikes on Iran. The Iraqi News Agency INA described the strikes as a “flagrant violation” of international law and demanded that the UNSC “deter the Zionist entity.” 7

On June 13 and 16, Baghdad and the southern, mainly Shi’a governorates, witnessed mass rallies featuring the habitual pro-Iran banners, with portraits of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Qasem Soleimani, Hezbollah’s slain leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and other martyrs along with a preponderance of Kata’ib Hezbollah flags.

Slogans and chants were repeated as raised voices cursed Israel and the United States. Spokesperson for the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) formerly SCIRI, prominent in the Coordination Framework, Ali al-Daffayi, declared that further protests were being organised “so that the Iraqi people’s voice echoes in solidarity with the Islamic Republic of [Iran].”

He called on the government in Baghdad to acquire advanced air defense systems to prevent Israeli strikes from traversing Iraqi airspace, and warned that “we must seek [defenses] from other countries” if the U.S. refuses to provide them, claiming Israel was attempting to “drag the entire region into mayhem,” adding “we are united in condemning the [Israeli] aggression, in backing the Islamic Republic and its right to defend itself.” 8

Tens of thousands of followers of Moqtada al-Sadr also held anti-Israel demonstrations on June 21st in Baghdad. The leader’s speech read at the protest condemned Israeli attacks on Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and the role of the United States, his erstwhile foe since the war on Iraq. Sadr said Israel and the US were the “main culprits behind all wars across the world.” 9

Top Iranian commanders assassinated

Just days before, Israel had killed several top IRGC commanders including the head of the Quds Force (IRGC-QF) Qasem Soleimani’s successor, General Esmail Qaani, a frequent visitor to Baghdad in liaison with the Coordination Framework.

The killings of Major General Mohammed Bagheri, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, the highest ranking military official, and his elder brother Hassan, who founded the IRGC’s Military Intelligence branch, Saeed Izadi of the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, Behnam Shahriyari, of the QF Weapons Transfer Unit, were killed, but Ali Shamkani, a senior aide to Ali Khamenei survived his injuries.

Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the IRGC Naval Forces also survived. But Davoud Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij, IRGC Commander, General Hossein Salami 10 and several nuclear scientists lost their lives in Israel’s strikes.

China, Russia, remain Iran’s allies

Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and other world leaders whose rising stars now outshine those of the United States and Europe condemned the US for having crossed the red lines of international law – as they had Israel’s attacking Iran. Their condemnation was repeated by fellow UN Security Council members Algeria and Pakistan.

Russian envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, denounced the attacks saying: “The Iranian, peaceful civilian nuclear facilities continue to be targeted, and this is liable to plunge us into an unseen nuclear catastrophe” and criticized the West for enabling Israeli aggression, stating that rhetoric from British, French and German diplomats “is just as dangerous as the deadliest weaponry.” He stressed that Israeli attacks targeting civilian targets in Iran is completely unacceptable and unlawful under international law. 11

Trump, and Netanyahu were, and remained, as usual, crowing over their success entirely unapologetically. It repeated a similar rhetoric to that which characterised the period in which the US and UK built up to attack Iraq circulating false ‘intelligence’ . Today it is that Iran was on the verge of having a nuclear weapon.’

It is not quite twenty years since Saddam Hussein was executed by the pro-Iran Shi’a parties empowered by the United States under George W. Bush to take control over Iraq. Far Right Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, pushing for the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei on 18 June jeered he might meet, ‘A fate like that of Saddam Hussein: Preventing his (continued) existence is one of the operation’s objectives, “ he said, referring to Israel’s ‘Rising Lion’ attacks that kicked off on June 13. 12

Tehran’s retaliation has come in its launching of more than 400 hypersonic missiles and hundreds of drones against Israeli targets. Successful impact of Haj Qasem ballistic missiles (named after QF leader, Qasem Soleimani, assassinated in Baghdad in January 2020 by the US with Israeli cooperation) highlight the weaknesses of the much-vaunted Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow II and III interceptors as Iran scores direct hits on military and other objectives. 13

Syria closed its air space after Israeli attacks on Iran revealed that Syrian air space had been used for the refuelling of an Israel F-16 jet from an Israeli Boeing 707 Re’em tanker mid-air over Deir Ezzor. 14 Israel has been using the air corridor with virtual freedom. 15

Israel is burning after more than 20 waves of retaliatory strikes. 16 Fatah I missiles reached objectives in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem today as Israeli civilians sought shelter. 17 Israel sought to curtail independent media reporting, trying to block AP reports from sites struck and blocking al-Jazeera.

Hours after the US bombed three nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, on June 22 Iran launched its 20th strike, comprising more than two dozen missiles, including against Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv that had evacuated its fleet.18

Iran claimed to have used the Kheibar Shekan missile, a fourth generation of the Khorramshah missile family with the heaviest payload of 1,500 kilograms pounds in the course of Operation True Promise. Its name refers to the 7th-century Battle of Khyber between Muslims and Jews in Arabia, where Imam Ali bin Abi Talib played a historic role. Western media had also reported that it had been used during “Sadiq Promise 1” in April 2024 and in “Sadiq Promise 2” in October, 2024. 19

The pattern the Israeli assassinations follow is that seen from its attacks against Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.

UN Secretary General Antonio Antonio Guterres urged a return to diplomacy before the region becomes further engulfed. He said he was ‘gravely alarmed’ by the US of force and dangerous escalation in a volatile region.20

Iraqi government spokesman, Bassem al-Awadi said, “The US’s military escalation created a grave threat to peace and security in the Middle East… and called for diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the crisis. 21

This is a war in which everyone loses.

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