The Pentagon is considering renaming the war with Iran from “Operation Epic Fury” to “Operation Sledgehammer” if President Trump decides to restart the full-scale bombing campaign against Iran, NBC News reported on Tuesday.
Sources also told NBC that the US currently has more firepower in the region before the US and Israel launched the war on February 28. “We are in a better spot now than on February 27,” a US official said. “We have more firepower and capability.”
The potential name change is part of the Trump administration’s effort to maneuver around the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which was an attempt to rein in the Executive Branch’s disregard of the Constitution’s requirement that Congress has the sole power to declare war.
The resolution does not supersede the Constitution and states that to introduce US forces into hostilities, the president must have a declaration of war or authorization from Congress, or a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces,” none of which the Trump administration had before launching the war.
The War Powers Resolution also includes a 60-day deadline for the president to end any unauthorized military action or obtain authorization from Congress, which has been falsely reinterpreted to give the president 60 days to wage war without congressional authorization.
The 60-day deadline for the Iran war expired on May 1, and the administration has tried to claim that the ceasefire should have paused the clock, but the US has continued to enforce a blockade on Iran, which means the US military is still engaged in hostilities against the country.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to frame the ongoing US military actions in the region as “defensive operations,” but they are all part of the war that the US and Israel started on February 28. He has also declared that “Operation Epic Fury” was over, though according to NBC, the Pentagon has continued to use the name when discussing its operations.
A White House official told NBC that the administration believes giving the war a new name would effectively restart the War Powers clock, and that “Operation Sledge Hammer” is not the only name under consideration.
Congress has failed in its duty to assert its War Powers over the president, as multiple Iran-related War Power Resolutions have been voted down in both the House and the Senate.
The NBC report comes as a resumption of the full-scale bombing campaign appears likely, as President Trump has rejected Iran’s latest response in the indirect negotiations mediated by Pakistan as “totally unacceptable” and Tehran has made clear that it’s not going to back down on its core demands.
