Israel-Iran live news: Israel prepared for ‘long campaign’ against Iran
- The US has moved several B-2 stealth bombers, along with refueling tankers, to the Pacific, as Trump continues to dither on whether or not the US will join Israel’s assault.
- Israel launches attacks on northwestern Iran as Iran fires more drones towards Israel on day nine of the conflict.
- Iran says more than 400 people have been killed and at least 3,056 others wounded since Israel launched its attack on June 13.
- French President Emmanuel Macron says he and Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, have agreed to “accelerate” nuclear negotiations between European powers and Iran.
- US President Donald Trump has publicly rebuked his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, saying she was wrong to state there was no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
As president of the United States, Donald Trump has fairly broad authority to order military strikes if he believes that the US is being attacked, or is about to be attacked.
If conflict became sustained and substantial, then he would have to go to Congress and ask for their support in the form of an official war declaration.
But no one suggests you would need to go to Congress every time you order any sort of military strikes. Certainly, we’ve seen that kind of action carried out in the past by presidents from both parties.
What may be interesting is the question of international law on whether or not the US can carry out such attacks.
An imminent attack towards the US would give them cover under international law.
But as we heard from Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence in March, it was the assessment of the US intelligence community that Iran was not building a bomb and the supreme leader had not decided to restart the nuclear weapons programme he had suspended years earlier.
That, of course, is an assessment that Donald Trump has just said in the past 24 hours is wrong.
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