Jared Golden: My thoughts on the conflict in Iran

By U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine

Between two combat deployments in the Middle East and eight years on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, I’ve been wrestling for almost 20 years with many of the questions being debated about the ongoing military operations against Iran.

On issues as complex as Iran, it’s hard to boil down my thoughts into a slogan — so I’m making it the focus of this monthly post.

The key questions behind the War Powers resolution

By now you’ve likely seen that I voted against a war powers resolution written by my colleagues, Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, that would have forced an immediate stop to the United States’ military engagement in Iran.

This vote has been portrayed by many partisans and media outlets as a simple, up-or-down vote. In their telling, a “no” vote meant you believed the president had the authority to strike Iran and was wise to do so. A “yes” vote meant the president had started an illegal war of choice, which you oppose.

The reality is much more complex. There are longstanding and unresolved tensions between the president’s and Congress’s authority over military action. And while military conflict with Iran was likely avoidable in 2026, now that the shooting has started, the regime in Tehran is more dangerous than ever. At this point I believe an abrupt ending would open the door to even greater risks for America.

Rather than immediate withdrawal, it’s more advisable to establish a realistic timeline for our military forces to degrade Iran’s military capabilities to the degree that its ability to harm America’s security interests, and our allies, is severely hamstrung.

But fundamentally, I also believe the Khanna-Massie resolution focused on the wrong question. It’s not sufficient to look backward and ask whether the president was right to start this conflict. With armed conflict having begun, Congress should help lead America toward a responsible pathway forward in the midst of a volatile situation.

Iran’s threat to the United States is real

In my time in Congress, I have received many briefings on Iran. A conclusion I had reached is that the regime in Tehran is enough of a threat to the United States that military action could very well have become unavoidable.

The incumbent Iranian regime is hostile to the United States, and its “forward defense” doctrine (I recommend Ray Takeyh’s and Vali Nasr’s works for more background) is a main driver of recent instability in the Middle East. For years, when American troops or civilians were targeted abroad, odds were good that those shooting at us had received financial support, training or arms from Tehran.

Even still, the United States has managed to go more than 40 years without a sustained, hot war with Iran. Based on what I heard last week, I feel it’s questionable whether or not the threat to America had become immediate enough to demand preemptive action against Iran.

The president must set clear goals — and Congress must hold him to them

Since the strikes began on Feb. 28, the president and his cabinet have offered sometimes contradictory statements about the rationale for the conflict and the United States’ goals in Iran.

At this time, I would not support congressional authorization for sustained combat operations without the administration making clear that it has reasonable and achievable objectives.

If the goal is regime change, I am deeply skeptical that a bombing campaign will successfully break a mosaic defense designed for this exact scenario. I also wholeheartedly reject the president’s suggestion that the United States should install its own leader in Tehran, or any other sentiment that Iranian democracy should be dictated at the end of an American-held rifle barrel.

Even if this operation topples Iran’s regime, forcing 90 million people to accept an American-imposed leader and political system is a recipe for disaster. Foreign control breeds resentment, not gratitude.

I have seen nation-building fail firsthand in Afghanistan and Iraq. I spent years in the region and never found broad buy-in for America’s mission to stand up democracy. Making the same mistake in Iran would be unlikely to deliver different results.

What a responsible end to the conflict could look like

In order to safely walk away from a fight, you should have confidence that your opponent cannot, or at least will not, continue it. Insofar as the administration’s goal is to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten America and our allies — for example, by significantly degrading its missile capacity, its navy and its airpower — then Congress should provide the time and space to do so.

The War Powers Act of 1973 gives the president 60 days to conclude military operations such as those he’s undertaken against Iran. I believe Congress should tighten that window, and set other clear guardrails in place.

I’m co-leading my own war powers resolution, which would:

Reduce the time the president is authorized to continue hostilities from 60 to 30 days;

Ban the deployment of American ground troops in Iran without congressional approval while protecting search and rescue and intelligence missions;

Allow us to defend against incoming attacks on our bases, embassies and allies;

Require the administration to brief Congress at a set, regular cadence until the end of hostilities.

One month should be enough time for the president to articulate clear, achievable goals that convince the American people and Congress that this operation should continue, or to minimize Iran’s military capabilities to the point that he can safely end hostilities.

The need for constitutional clarity

Hanging over this entire debate are unresolved questions about the division of authority between Congress and the president over the use of military force.

Congress passed the War Powers Act of 1973 to reassert the legislative branch’s power in the warmaking process in the wake of the Vietnam War. The law requires the president to notify Congress of any military action within 48 hours. It also requires the president to withdraw from hostilities within 60 days, absent congressional authorization for ongoing operations.

So far, President Donald Trump has met these benchmarks. But every president from both parties, since the law’s enactment, has contended that it infringed upon their constitutional authority as commander in chief. The courts have never ruled definitively on the constitutionality of the act itself.

That legal ambiguity is a problem. It’s possible the courts could get a chance to resolve it soon. While representatives of President Trump have briefed Congress before and throughout the conflict, it’s not hard to imagine him continuing hostilities past 60 days and claiming, as his predecessors have done, that such limitations are unconstitutional. If the president does come to Congress over Iran, I suspect he will ask for more money — not formal permission.

In the meantime, I’ll be working to build support for my resolution, supporting our servicemembers as they carry out a dangerous and difficult operation, and seeking to gather the information needed to make the best judgment possible about how America should proceed in this high-stakes and dangerous situation.

Golden of Lewiston represents Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

This piece was originally published on March 11 in “Dear Mainer,” Golden’s Substack. It is reposted here in its entirety, with permission.