American bomber planes struck on Sunday against three of Iran's most important nuclear facilities.
If this breaks Iran's capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons, it will be a success for Trump. But if the response is attacks against American interests or American bases or dead soldiers, then criticism will come, says Dag Blanck, professor of North American studies at Uppsala University.
Promised no more unnecessary wars
One of Donald Trump's biggest promises in the election campaign was precisely not to drag the US into any more "unnecessary wars" as he called it.
There he has a job to convince the voters who voted for him for that reason. It will be an interesting test of how strong his support is among the loyal Maga voters, says Dag Blanck.
For several days, the attacks between Israel and Iran have escalated. At the same time, the world has been waiting to see if the US will enter the war. A major question has been whether Trump would decide to attack Iran without congressional approval.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now believes that Trump should be impeached, she writes on X.
Outdated view of war
But even if the constitution says that only Congress can declare war, the chance that Trump will actually be impeached is very low, especially when the Republicans have a majority in Congress, according to both Dag Blanck and Jan Hallenberg.
The last time the US formally declared war was against Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria in 1942 during World War II.
During Obama, Libya was bombed for several months without congressional approval. For the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, George W Bush instead received full mandate from Congress through a so-called Authorization for Use of Military Force, says Jan Hallenberg.
The main tools that the American Congress has in this situation are to limit the budget needed to be able to wage war.
It is an older way of looking at war and peace that the American constitution talks about. Countries do not declare war by sending letters to each other's foreign ministries anymore, says Dag Blanck.
