Americanswers… on 5 Live! Are Trump’s Iran strikes breaking the law?

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1:12Anthony:This is obviously a huge moment for the whole world, but it is, of course, also a huge moment for the Trump presidency, for its immediate future and indeed its longer term success. We have just come off Five Live, a live programme with Matt Chorley. It is 10 to 4 in the afternoon here in London on Monday. We were answering lots of questions, all of them, of course, on this subject, with a range, a range going from the impact of US casualties on the Trump administration's prosecution of the war through to the effect on the midterm elections and indeed whether or not Donald Trump and his team care about international law.

1:51Anthony:Welcome to AmeriCouncers on 5 Live.

2:23OK, well, needless to say, all of the questions today focus on the situation in Iran. We'll do our best to cover as many questions in as many different areas as we possibly can. We had a lot of questions, actually, about how this will play out in America and the prospect of US casualties. This is Donald Trump speaking yesterday in response to those early military casualties. This is via a video statement, a video he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. Earlier today, CENTCOM shared the news that three U.S. military service members have been killed in action. As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.

3:06Even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives, We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen. And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That's the way it is. Likely be more. But we'll do everything possible where that won't be the case. And in fact, since that statement, we've heard there is a fourth member of the US military has been killed. Well, Stefan from the Netherlands is on the line with a question. Hi, Stefan.

3:42Anthony:Hiya, I was wondering, and now we could start to speak of a full-out war between Iran and the USA, how many victims will the Maghabe's accept? And has President Trump waged too much and misjudged the power of the Iranian defence and not considered what this will do in the US? Or does he just not care anymore about the midterms and wants his place cemented in history? Great question, thank you for that, Stefan. How will these deaths be received in America, Anthony? I think it's not going to be received well if these numbers keep growing. Americans don't really pay attention to foreign policy, don't care too much about what goes on overseas, as long as American men and women are not coming home in coffins.

4:26And now there is a death count assigned with this military operation. And if this becomes a kind of a steady drip, you'll see, I think, the same sort of response that we saw in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which is the public sours on it. And when I say sours on it, they're already not big fans of this war. The polling numbers show that a majority of Americans think Donald Trump should have done more diplomacy. They don't think that this war is justified. So it's shaky ground to start with. And if there are more American deaths, I think it definitely could become a serious political liability for Donald Trump.

5:02And it could cost him even more in the midterms looking ahead to November.

5:06Anthony:When you look back to what happened to Joe Biden, what we tend to forget is that he also pulled out of Afghanistan in catastrophically chaotic circumstances. And it led to the deaths of American service personnel who the American people felt should not have died. Also, by the way, led to the deaths of Afghans. But just to focus on the Americans, and it also led to the loss of a lot of equipment that was stuck in Afghanistan and is now in the possession of the Taliban. In other words, if things go wrong militarily, I agree with Anthony. I think people who are already a bit leery about a war could very quickly turn quite markedly against it.

5:46We've talked a lot, though, about how things that we thought were unpopular because Donald Trump was against them, then with Republicans, or certainly with MAGA, then when he does them, they suddenly think, actually, it must be a good thing if Donald Trump's doing it.

6:00Anthony:Yeah. And I mean, I think there is also there is a certain MAGA cohort who will stick with him, whatever. There's no question about that. He has this group, this sort of praetorian guard of people who will vote for him, stick with him. But it's not enough to win elections. And I think that's the point that actually, if you look at recent opinion polls and you look at where the fall off in support for him has been, It's been particularly among those who call themselves independents. We think of independents as being this kind of cerebral group of people saying, oh, on the one hand, on the other.

6:34Anthony:It's not really quite like that. But it's people who occasionally would have been persuaded to vote for him and have in the past and are now saying, you know what, I'm not going to bother. And that's the group that he loses. Stefan, thank you for that question. And this will be an interesting test for the MAGA base because Donald Trump campaigned from the very beginning on no foreign wars, on pulling the United States out of these forever wars in the Middle East, and here we are now him getting into it. or how they react to this, a central tenet of MAGA movement is being called into question. That's great.

7:04Thank you, Stefan. Actually, we'll move straight on, actually, to some questions about, Stefan mentioned them, but the midterms in particular. Loads of people are asking about the timing, the decision to launch the strikes against Iran this weekend as midterm elections are happening in November. We know the Republican Party could lose control of both the House and the Senate. We've got Simon in Warwick, first of all, and we've got Claire in London. Simon, what's your question?

7:28Anthony:Hello. Hi, AmeriCast team and everyone. I might be being a bit cynical, but I wanted to ask about timing. How much do you think the upcoming midterms may have factored into Trump's decision to act now? Do you think he would see a successful outcome as politically helpful, but particularly, you know, how his core MAGA supporters would feel about that? It doesn't feel at all taco this time. Taco, of course, is Trump all his chickens out. Famous acronym? Acronym? Abbreviation. Taco is an acronym, yeah. Very good. Claire, what's your question? Hi, yeah. So I was wondering if Trump may use this war as grounds for even postponing or cancelling the midterms, you know, due to a wartime national emergency.

8:19Anthony:Because I actually already saw this on The Wrap with Marjorie Taylor Greene raising that as a possibility. So I was just like, wow, is that something that could happen? It's fair to say Marjorie Taylor Greene also until recently believed that space lasers controlled by prominent Jewish families, you know what I mean? I'm not aligning myself. But I mean, actually, I take your point, and actually, you know, to argue against myself, we have begun to take Marjorie Taylor Greene rather more seriously than we used to, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to bring her up. I don't know what Anthony thinks of her views of politics now, but I think she probably will run for the presidency, actually, next time round.

8:59Anthony:And I think she has got a base as well. But if you put her to one side, the question, number one, can you get rid of the midterms? I don't think you can. Elections are not run by the federal government in the States. They're run in the States and by the States. And they've always been run through any kind of emergency as well. Anthony will correct me if I'm wrong, but you just don't get rid of them for an emergency, however huge it is, unless I suppose it was actually on American soil. Isn't that right, Anthony? We had elections during World War Two. We had elections during the Civil War. Abraham ran for re-election during the Civil War.

9:36Anthony covered them.

9:40So the United States is pressed on. The only one I can remember is there was a primary election in New York City the day of September 11th attacks. And they postponed that just because the city was not able to handle it. But again, they had they had elections that November just a few months later. So the American electoral system is resilient. And I can understand the concern. Marjorie Taylor Greene is one expressing them. She is not alone in the least. But I think this is still we're still a long way from November, although there's a primary here in Texas tomorrow. So the elections and midterms are already starting.

10:18People's names are on the ballots to set up these general election races in November.

10:22Anthony:Yeah. And just on Simon's point about the timing. And I mean, you can suggest that this is a sort of effort to take people's minds off whatever their domestic woes are. I mean, you know, everyone will have their own view on that. I tend to think, actually, that if he wanted to take people's minds off it, he would have done it much closer to the elections themselves. It's quite a long way off yet. Yeah. In order to kind of have a rallying around the flag thing going on. You look back to 2004, sorry, this is prehistory, but you go back to 2004 and Bush's re-election wasn't certain then until Osama bin Laden, I think it must have been an audio tape in those days, suddenly injected himself into the election.

11:05Anthony:And at that stage, people kind of did rally round enough for Bush in the end to win perfectly comfortably. So if you were being really cynical as a president, you'd probably do that, wouldn't you? Anthony the extent to which you think Donald Trump is seized by what happens in the midterms versus you know securing his legacy and doing the things that he wants to do while he's still president he's ultimately not I mean he obviously you know it's more useful for him if he does control the House and the Senate although he seems to be ploughing on regardless in lots of ways he's not up for election again how much of this is actually about because he wants to be seen to be the guy that sorted out all these problems and actually the elections are sort of a separate thought?

11:47Yeah, I think so much of what Donald Trump has been doing in the past year and a few months is about his legacy. And that's natural for a second term president to try to do some legacy building to try to cement their place in the history books, but putting his name on buildings, renaming geographic areas, the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the changes to the federal government. He definitely is aware of his place in history, and this could be part of it. This, I think, has been presented to him by people in the administration, by the Israelis, as a once-in-a-generation chance to change the dynamic in Iran and thereby in the entirety of the Middle East.

12:28But, you know, Simon said that he was a bit of a cynic, and I think Donald Trump also is a bit of a cynic. I think he does understand that The midterms are coming. And back in 2012, he was posting on Twitter that Obama would probably launch a war on Iran in order to change his poll numbers and in order to secure his reelection. So Donald Trump back in 2012 was the same sort of same same sort of thing that Simon was saying, that the president might be doing this in order to gain political advantage. So it certainly is a thought that has crossed Donald Trump's mind in the past, that these things could change, could shake up an election.

13:05Foreign wars could change that, change that for the better, perhaps. Great questions. Thank you to Simon. Thank you to Claire. Just it occurs to me when we're talking about the election, obviously, the extent that the Americans focus on international news versus domestic. if there does start being an impact on oil prices on the flow of goods on the availability of the things that americans want to buy that becomes a very real life tangible thing doesn't it yeah

13:32Anthony:absolutely i mean it doesn't focus minds much in the states on the actual supply of these energy products because they've got them all there yeah um and they're completely self-sufficient essentially but of course it does on the on the price on the international price which will eventually affect price of fuel at the pumps and all the rest of it. And that is one of the kind of key measures of inflation that people get really cross about because they rely so much on their cars. So yes, it does have the ability to come back to bite him if it goes on for a long time. On the other hand, you know, our assumptions at the moment are that things go wrong and you can see things going wrong.

14:08Anthony:And obviously there's the deaths of service people. But if it were to, if he were to be able to find an off-ramp and the damage to the US itself wasn't too bad, then I don't see it necessarily, you know, to go back to what Simon was suggesting, I don't see it necessarily as a bad thing for Trump, actually, politically, in spite of MAGA and in spite of all the difficulties that he might have. And he'll argue I've sorted out the thing that no one else managed to sort out, essentially, in the last 40 years. Let's move on, because we've had a lot of questions, actually, about where the opposition is, both the Democrats, but also just opposition more generally.

14:42particularly on the fact that Trump did not consult Congress before the strikes. We have an email from Charlie in Bedfordshire which says, could you explain again how the responsibilities and power of the House of Representatives and the Senate interact within Congress? This would really help me to understand the key issues and what does it state for both Democrats and Republicans in what sounds like a crucial phase of the Trump era with midterm elections in November. I wonder if we know anyone who could really explain the US Constitution to us. Anthony's very shaky on this stuff, but give him a go.

15:11Do your best. Put me on the spot again. Yeah, the Constitution says that Congress has the power to declare war. I mean, just full stop. How that has been interpreted in the modern era, when presidents can launch military strikes on a moment's notice, and that there is and has been no formal declaration of war since World War II, and the United States certainly has been involved in a number of significant military operations since then. It's kind of a gray area. Congress should and believe that it has the power to approve or deny military operations, but it tends to be after the fact. At this point, Donald Trump has already had three military operations, and he has informed Congress, informed leaders in Congress as they were happening, but didn't ask their permission.

16:02We did see George W. Bush back in 2003 go to Congress to ask for permission for the Iraq war and get authorization for this extended military operation. But there is a question, a constitutional question, about whether they actually have to do that. There's legislation called the War Powers Act that sets rules that a president has to abide by. If he engages in hostilities, he has to come back to Congress and get them to sign off on it within a set number of days. Congress has the ability to vote that down, and then the president has to wind down the military operation. But Donald Trump is not the only president, since this was passed in the 1970s, to say that that law is unconstitutional and infringes on president's powers.

16:47So I think you could see Donald Trump continue to press on and dare Congress to try to stop him. And at least right now, I'm not even sure the way things are going, that there is a will, a majority in either the House or the Senate to tell him to cut it out. So it's a gray area. And the president's modern presidents just have such expansive power on authorizing the use of military force that that there's there's few checks that Congress seems to have at this point to stop a determined president.

17:17Anthony:And I'm not sure the Democrats necessarily want to have the choice put to them. Because, you know, you look at what happened last time. Anthony mentioned 2003. I mean, they were asked and they did pin their colours to the mast, as it were. And Hillary Clinton famously saying, OK, I support it. Barack Obama wasn't there at the time, but didn't support it. And enormously politically benefited from that. But this time round for the Democrats, I mean, is it a slam dunk to say, no, this is an outrage? What if it's successful? How do you look then? So those sorts of choices are difficult. It's a great area that might benefit everyone.

17:50That's a great question. Thank you for that, Charlie. In Bedfordshire, let's turn our attention to international law now. We've got Robert on the line. Hello, Robert.

17:57Anthony:Yes, your coverage, as far as I've heard it, doesn't suggest that there's any meaningful concern within the US that the attacks on Iran are contrary to international law, nor any sort of realisation that disregard of international law risks turning the United States into a rogue state. Is that correct? Is that correct? Yes, pretty much. Justice logic, yes. Pretty much correct. But for this reason, that I think if you were, if there were a White House person here and they would answer your point, they would say international law didn't stop the Russians in Ukraine, international law won't stop the Chinese in Taiwan, international law hasn't stopped Iran, doing all sorts of nefarious things to the countries around it, Hamas funding and Hezbollah and all the rest of it, international law, they would say, only really operates to tie the hands of the good guys and allow the bad guys to get away with whatever they want to do.

19:02Anthony:And that is why, you know, you can say, well, that's nonsense and there are all sorts of reasons why we should still support international law and it puts us in a different category and we can then at least say to countries like Russia, you are breaking international law and trying to, you know, I mean, that's a perfectly legitimate point, obviously. But if I'm to say to you why it is that in the White House, and I suspect actually more widely around the United States, international law isn't really at the top of people's agendas, then that's really it. Yeah, international law, there are norms and guidelines.

19:33But as Justin says, there's no one around to enforce it. And if you listen to someone like Stephen Miller, who is a senior advisor in the White House, He came right out and said international law has no teeth, that force and the use of force and power is what determines the fate of nations and influences international affairs. And the United States is not going to, as Justin said, have its hands tied. It's going to exercise that power to advance its agenda. But I think you are right that this is a violation of international law. targeting the leaders of a foreign country is a violation of international law, whether it was Israel that dropped the bombs on the Ayatollah and these senior leaders, or it was the United States.

20:17It's still this operation contravened a pretty fundamental principle of international law. But I don't think anyone here cares that much about it. The American people certainly aren't looking down at the international norms governing this and say, no, no, wait a minute, we broke the rules and we should apologise. And that's essentially what happens when you've got a president who was elected on the basis of not abiding by norms. Robert, great question. Thank you for that. Just finally, because we are waiting to hear from Keir Starmer in the Commons. Richard is emailed in from Sheffield saying, Are politicians are keen to emphasise a special relationship the UK has with America, but it doesn't appear to be nearly as special as a relationship the US has with Israel?

20:58We're obviously focused on the UK, so we're in the UK. I suppose Trump, probably given everything else that's going on although he was asked about kirsten with support probably isn't thinking a huge amount about the uk right now probably not uh it's the united states's relationship with israel that is front and center right now and that has been a complicated relationship you remember at the beginning of last year there was uh reports of tensions between the united states and israel between uh administration officials and benjamin netanyahu that he wasn't being uh forthcoming enough, conciliatory enough in these negotiations with Hamas to reach some sort of a peace deal.

21:36But when push comes to shove, the United States and Israel have been working side by side. The United States took part in that bombing campaign, Midnight Hammer, the operation to drop bombs on some of Iran's nuclear research sites during that short war between Israel and Iran. And of course, Now the cooperation is even more pronounced with the United States and Israel coordinating this massive aerial campaign. And that shows that for all of the reported tensions that the United States and Israel, the Trump administration, the Netanyahu administration are both working towards the same objective, at least for now.

22:17We'll see what happens if they're left to pick up the pieces in Iran and whether American priorities depart, move away from what Israel seems to want in the region.