UPDATED: Recent U.S. Airstrikes: Legal
Authorities and Questions
Updated February 18, 2020
Update: The Trump Administration has reported to Congress a “change in application of the existing
legal and policy frameworks” regarding the use of military force, which presented the following legal
justification for the January airstrikes:
Article II of the United States Constitution, empowers the President, as Commander in Chief, to
direct the use of military force to protect the Nation from an attack or threat of imminent attack and
to protect important national interests. Article II thus authorized the President to use force against
forces of Iran, a state responsible for conducting and directing attacks against United States forces
in the region. In addition, under the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq
(2002 AUMF), “the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he
determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to ... defend the national security of the United
States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” Although the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's
regime was the initial focus of the statute, the United States has long relied upon the 2002 AUMF
to authorize the use of force for the purpose of establishing a stable, democratic Iraq and addressing
terrorist threats emanating from Iraq. Such uses of force need not address threats from the Iraqi
Government apparatus only, but may address threats to the United States posed by militias, terrorist
groups, or other armed groups in Iraq. (Footnotes omitted).
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs posted this report on its website on February 14, 2020. The
original Legal Sidebar from January 8, 2020 appears below.
Recent U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have raised legal questions concerning the scope of the
President’s power to use force against Iran and Iran-backed organizations. In late December, U.S. forces
conducted airstrikes against five facilities in Iraq and Syria used by Kata’ib Hizbollah—an entity with ties
to Iran designated by the Department of State as a foreign terrorist organization. According to a
Department of Defense (DOD) statement, the strikes came in response to attacks on military bases in Iraq
that host U.S. forces engaged in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State. Two days later, Kata’ib
Hizbollah supporters and others marched to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, damaging property and setting
fire to outer buildings. Then, on January 2, 2020, the U.S. military, at the direction of the President, killed
Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and Abu
Mahdi al Muhandis, an Iraqi security official and Kata’ib Hizballah founder named as a specially
