May 05, 2026 11:24 AM UTC

Sure Looks Like War, But Don't Call It War

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Washington Post updates on the state of play in President Donald Trump’s now two-months-and-counting old war on Iran, which the administration now insists isn’t happening at all in a bid to thwart the War Powers Act as the deadline for congressional authorization blows by like a worn-down speedbump:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the U.S. mission to protect commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz would be temporary and other nations would soon have to take responsibility, emphasizing that the fragile ceasefire with Iran remained in place despite attacks on U.S. ships a day earlier…

Since the ceasefire was announced, Iran has fired at commercial vessels nine times, seized two and attacked U.S. forces more than 10 times, he said — “all below the threshold of restarting major combat operations, at this point.”

The general characterized Iranian attacks so far as “below harassing fire right now; it feels like Iran is grasping at straws to try to do something across the southern flank.”

CNBC reports that a small number of U.S.-flagged merchant ships made the run through the Strait of Hormuz under U.S. Navy protection yesterday, but traffic remains essentially stalled as the global economic consequences of the closure aggregate. American forces fired on Iranian vessels they claimed were military (Iran disputes this), and conflicting reports continue to come in describing ongoing Iranian attacks against Gulf states. It’s difficult to know with certainty what is really going on, not least because of ample evidence that the U.S. government hasn’t been honest about the extent of damage inflicted on assets in the region since the start of the war.

But to maintain the pretense that supposedly keeps Trump from having to get permission from Congress, they can’t call it war. We haven’t technically been “at war” since early last month.

All of which adds up to solid justification for Rep. Jason Crow’s newest War Powers resolution to end this overwhelmingly unpopular “excursion,” as Denver7 reports:

Violence surged again in the war with Iran on Monday as U.S. forces launched Project Freedom in the Strait of Hormuz, even as Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colorado, pushed a new effort in Congress to rein in the conflict…

“We have to end this cycle of insanity, and I’m here to say the buck stops with me. I’m going to do everything possible to rein in this endless cycle of conflict,” Crow said.

Previous War Powers Resolutions have failed along party lines…

“They started a war without fully thinking it through, without bringing our allies along with us, without explaining to the American people, to Coloradans, to Congress, what they were doing,” Crow said. “We have an adversary, in this case, Iran, which is a 6,000-year-old society, an adversary that believes that time is on its side and just wants to wait us out while we spend tens of billions of dollars with blockades and with enormous military presence.”

No one should have any false hope that this resolution will get through Speaker Mike Johnson’s sycophantic House, but continued pressure on the administration is politically very important as this conflict rolls on with no end in sight. As American consumers pay the price for a war they didn’t want, and the conflict drags on well past the administration’s original promised date that it would end, Trump has managed to make the Republican Party’s already difficult job of holding their majorities in the House and Senate in the fast-approaching midterms even harder. For vulnerable Republicans like Colorado’s Rep. Gabe Evans, higher gas prices could be the final metaphorical blow to a short career in office.

From our armchair in the Mountain Time Zone, it looks like the last time Trump had control over this situation was when he made the original choice to launch the war on Iran. Since then, despite crushing losses in war materiel and the targeted killing of dozens of Iran’s top leaders, Iran has held the strategic initiative at a fraction of the cost of Trump’s offensive. It is Iran who with threats and asymmetrical harassment has kept the Strait of Hormuz basically shut for over two months, while Trump has tried and failed to bully other major powers to join the conflict he started.

Again, if we knew how this would end, we’d be on the prediction markets instead of writing blog posts. But we can foresee some political outcomes, and none of them are good for Republicans. A war that broke one of Trump’s most popular promises, divided his core base of support, and gobsmacked everyone else over its self-evident lack of forethought could become Trump’s seminal act of political self-destruction.

We’ve said that before too. This seems more and more like it could be the one.