On the Brink of War Again? Iran, US Foreign Policy, and the Use of Force

This post is by Katharine Hall, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary Online.

Tensions have been building between Iran and the United States over the past few months, with the US seemingly acting out the long-standing pro-intervention rhetoric of Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton by sending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier to the region.

It reached a fever pitch and potential tipping point in June, however, after Iran shot down a US Global Hawk drone in the Gulf of Oman. According to reports, Trump approved retaliatory strikes, but cancelled them at the last minute.

There is a lot to unpack from these recent developments. To list a few: a notable reversal of recent US foreign policy in relation to Iran with the Trump Administration withdrawing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, a long history of US interest and intervention (military and otherwise) in the Middle East, the role of the drone and the geographically expanding deployment of drones by the US since 9/11, the effectiveness of sanctions as a foreign policy tool, and so on.

Some of these pivot around the question of the justification for the use of force and potential military intervention (the ability of the US to go to war with Iran), and specifically the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which is still in effect today.

The AUMF

What is the 2001 AUMF and how does it fit into this issue today? Shortly after September 11, 2001, the US Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing the President (then George W. Bush) to use force in response to the attacks by Al Qaeda. Specifically, it said that the President is:

“authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

‘Specifically’ might be the wrong word to use here because the AUMF is clearly geographically and temporally broad, and in fact has been used to support military action beyond the US invasion of Afghanistan, including the expansion of drones strikes to countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The AUMF, in other words, forms the backbone of US military engagement in the era of the war on terror.

A new AUMF?

There are signs, however, that this might be changing, although Congress has resisted ending or replacing the 2001 AUMF. Not only are some members of Congress speaking out recently against the war in Yemen, questioning US justifications for its involvement, but in June Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, argued that the 2001 AUMF couldn’t be used to support military action with Iran – that a new AUMF would be needed.

While history has shown a trend of Congress deferring to the President on matters of the use of force and military intervention (and the open-endedness of the 2001 AUMF is illustrative of this), perhaps this tide is starting to turn.

While in practice this will likely have little effect on whether or not Trump orders strikes on Iran, it might at least open up a small space for debate within the spaces where US foreign policy is made over the justifications for US intervention, a debate which has been mostly nonexistent in Congress during the war on terror.

We explore a range of issues relating to US Foreign Policy, including how and by whom it is made, in Queen Mary Online's MA in International Relations module, ‘Themes And Cases in US Foreign Policy’.