We are going to tell you what Donald Trump said about the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and then we are going to tell you what Iran said, and then we are going to tell you what the United Nations Secretary-General said, and then we are going to let you sit with the gap between all three and draw your own conclusions.
Trump posted on Truth Social: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” He told NBC News in a phone interview: “We feel that that is a correct story.” He told ABC News: “I don’t want to say anything definitively until I see things but we believe he is.” He told Axios he had “spoken to a lot of people beyond” and felt “certain.” He also mentioned that once the dust settles, foreign governments will probably be calling him to ask who he’d like to lead Iran next. “I’m only being a little sarcastic when I say that,” he added. Just a little. Very normal wartime leadership.
Netanyahu announced at a press conference that there are “many signs that even the tyrant Khamenei does not exist.” Note the phrasing. Signs. Even Netanyahu, who spent the morning dropping 30 bombs on a compound, did not say the word confirmed.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry called both Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian “safe and sound.” Iran’s semi-official media said Khamenei was “steadfast and in command of the field.” The Supreme Leader has not appeared publicly or on video since the strikes began. His foreign minister says he’s alive. As far as he knows. That caveat is still doing an enormous amount of structural work.
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking at an emergency Security Council meeting called in response to the strikes, said directly that he was not in a position to confirm Israeli reports of Khamenei’s death. He also said he deeply regretted that an opportunity for diplomacy had been “squandered.”
So here is where we are: the man who told you Iran’s nuclear program was “completely and totally obliterated” — and said it eleven times over eight months while the DIA classified assessment said it wasn’t — is now telling you he feels “certain” that the Supreme Leader of Iran is dead, based on conversations with unspecified people. Israel, which has the most obvious incentive to declare mission accomplished, says there are signs. Iran says he’s fine. The UN says it cannot confirm. The body that actually requires confirmation before it believes things has confirmed nothing.
We will wait. We will update you the moment we have something verified by someone with a working relationship with facts. That list currently does not include anyone broadcasting from Mar-a-Lardo in a baseball cap because there aren’t enough people and hairspray to make him presentable at the moment.
What has been confirmed: the IDF says it killed IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour and senior adviser Ali Shamkhani — who Israel had already tried to kill in June, believed they’d succeeded, and was apparently surprised to find him still operational. Thirty senior Iranian leadership figures were targeted in the opening strikes. Many are confirmed dead. The succession crisis, regardless of Khamenei’s status, is real and it is immediate. Iran’s foreign policy apparatus has been decapitated. What fills that vacuum, and how fast, is the question that should be keeping every serious analyst awake tonight.
Now. Congress.
Article One of the United States Constitution gives Congress — not the President, not the Secretary of Defense, not the guy posting on Truth Social at 2:30 in the morning — the power to declare war. This is not a technicality. It is the foundational separation of powers. It is the thing James Madison specifically designed because, as Rand Paul quoted on the Senate floor Saturday, Madison wrote to Jefferson that “the Executive Branch is the branch most prone to war, therefore the Constitution, with studied care, delegated the war power to the legislature.”
The Gang of Eight — the eight congressional leaders and intelligence committee chairs who are supposed to be briefed on major national security actions — were notified by Marco Rubio roughly an hour before the bombs started falling. Notified. Not consulted. Not asked. Told. There is a difference the size of a constitutional republic between those two things.
So how is the body constitutionally charged with declaring war responding to the man who declared one without them?
Split, but not cleanly along party lines. And the non-clean parts are worth paying attention to.
Most Republicans (shockingly) fell in line. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Iranian regime had “refused the diplomatic off-ramps.” Speaker Mike Johnson said he was in “close contact with the President.” Lindsey Graham posted that “the end of the largest state sponsor of terrorism is upon us” and said his “mind is racing with the thought that the murderous ayatollah’s regime in Iran will soon be no more.” The biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years, he called it. Lindsey Graham has called things the biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years approximately every eighteen months since 2003, so we’ll file that one accordingly.
Tom Cotton said Iran’s “butcher’s bill has finally come due.” Rick Crawford said Trump had been “very clear about his red line.” The Republican chorus was largely what you’d expect from people who’ve spent four years marinating in the idea that foreign policy is a performance and war is a brand activation.
And then there was John Fucking Fetterman. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator — who has made a hobby of being the Democratic voice Republicans cite when they need to pretend bipartisan support exists for something — posted: “Operation Epic Fury. President Trump has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region. God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel.” John Fetterman, alone in the Democratic caucus, cheering the war. We see you, Johnny. We always see you.
Now for the part that should make you feel something closer to hope than despair, because these voices exist and they deserve to be heard.
Rand Paul — Republican of Kentucky, a man we do not often cite approvingly — quoted John Quincy Adams on the Senate floor. America, Adams wrote, “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” Paul called this “another presidential war” and said his oath is to the Constitution. He meant it. He has always meant it on this particular issue, even when we disagree with him on everything else.
Thomas Massie — also Kentucky Republican, also a man we do not often find ourselves nodding along with — said plainly: “This is not ‘America First.’” He called the strikes “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.” He said the Constitution requires a vote and that every representative needs to go on record. He is working with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna on a bipartisan war powers resolution that would force exactly that vote. Warren Davidson of Ohio, asked if he supported the strikes, replied: “No. War requires Congressional authorization.” One sentence. No hedging. The Constitution, applied.
Khanna was even sharper: “Congress must convene on Monday to vote to stop this war. Trump says his goal is to topple the Iranian regime. But the American people are tired of regime change, wars that cost us billions of dollars and risk our lives. We don’t want to be at war with a country of 90 million people in the Middle East.”
Hakeem Jeffries noted the specific absurdity that has been living rent-free in all of our heads since this morning: if Trump’s June 2025 strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, as he said eleven times, why exactly is a second round of strikes necessary? Jeffries called for the Massie-Khanna resolution to come to the floor and said the administration must “explain itself to the American people and Congress immediately.”
Andy Kim of New Jersey said next week wasn’t soon enough. “Congress must reassemble as soon as possible this weekend,” he told NBC. Tim Kaine called for an immediate return to session. Chuck Schumer implored Trump to “be straight with Congress and the American people about the objectives of these strikes and what comes next” — a request that, given that Trump told Axios he could “go long and take over the whole thing” or “end it in two or three days,” suggests the objectives of these strikes remain somewhat fluid even to their architect.
Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, put it the most simply: “By the president’s own words, ‘American heroes may be lost.’ That alone should have demanded the highest level of scrutiny, deliberation, and accountability, yet the president moved forward without seeking congressional authorization.” Read that again. The president said American troops might die. He said it in an eight-minute Truth Social video in a baseball cap. He did not ask Congress. He did not seek a vote. He notified eight people an hour before the bombs fell and called it his constitutional obligation.
The war powers resolution votes are coming. They failed the last time — Republicans narrowly defeated them in both chambers after June’s strikes. Whether the math has changed, or whether the sight of a girls’ school in Minab with 85 dead will move any votes that didn’t move before, remains to be seen.
What is not in question is this: a man with bone spurs started a war with a country of 90 million people, from a resort in Palm Beach, on a social media platform he owns, without asking the branch of government that the Constitution specifically designated for exactly this decision.
And the UN Secretary-General said an opportunity for diplomacy had been squandered.
He was not wrong.
We’ll be back when Khamenei’s status is confirmed by someone who isn’t trying to sell you something.
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