1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

Congress needs to act now on the catastrophic failure that is Trump's Iran war. The Strait of Hormuz has been closed since February 28, choking off 20% of the world's shipborne oil and even more of its fertilizer. Farmers can't get inputs. Gas prices have hammered working families. And Iran is now demanding reparations, sanctions relief, and effective control over a global trade chokepoint — all up front — because they don't trust Trump to honor his own agreements. They're right not to. Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding on June 17 that included a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, then publicly claimed he'd never heard of reparations. That's not a negotiating strategy. That's either dishonesty or incompetence, and either disqualifies him from managing this crisis. Philip Gordon, who served in the Biden White House, put it plainly: this outcome was "unthinkable before the war" and is now "unavoidable because of it." Meanwhile, Trump used journalists and White House staff as a decoy aircraft to shield himself from an Iranian threat — treating the people around him as expendable. Congress has constitutional authority over war powers and must use it. Hold hearings. Demand the full text of every agreement Trump has signed with Iran. Reassert oversight before this quagmire gets worse.