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Lawfare Archive: The National Security Law Podcast Guys Talk Soleimani

March 8, 2026·1 hr 14 min·5 clips

Experts debate whether killing Soleimani handed Iran a strategic victory by potentially forcing U.S. troops out of Iraq.

This Lawfare Archive episode, originally recorded on January 11, 2020, features law professors Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck analyzing the legality of the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. It was re-aired in March 2026 following the U.S.-Israel coordinated strikes on Iran that killed at least 1,045 people including Supreme Leader Khamenei. The professors begin by establishing the geopolitical context. They cite a Reuters report describing an October 2019 meeting where Soleimani instructed Iraqi Shiite militia leaders to escalate attacks on U.S. targets using sophisticated Iranian-supplied weapons. The strategic goal was to provoke the U.S. into an overreaction that would turn Iraqi public opinion against the American military presence and ultimately get U.S. forces expelled from Iraq -- a primary Iranian strategic objective. Chesney and Vladeck frame the competing interests: Iran sought to maximize influence in Iraq and remove the U.S. military presence; the U.S. sought to protect energy resources, suppress ISIS, and contain Iranian expansion. They note that the escalation cycle included a December 27 rocket attack that killed a U.S. civilian contractor, U.S. retaliatory strikes that killed 25 Kataeb Hezbollah fighters, the subsequent incursion into the U.S. embassy, and finally the Soleimani strike. The legal analysis systematically eliminates five statutory justifications that various administration officials cited. The 2001 AUMF, passed to target al-Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11, has no plausible connection to Iran despite the vice president's attempts to link Soleimani to al-Qaeda. The 2002 Iraq AUMF is closer but was designed to authorize regime change in Iraq, not strikes on Iranian generals. The War Powers Resolution explicitly states it is not a grant of authority. The designation of the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization triggers immigration and material support consequences but confers no use-of-force authority. A special operations funding statute (Section 127E) is a spending provision, not an authorization. The hosts then focus on the real legal question: Article II of the Constitution and the president's commander-in-chief power in the context of national self-defense. They trace this doctrine back to the Prize Cases of 1863, where the Supreme Court affirmed that the president has both the authority and duty to use military force when the nation has been attacked, while the power to initiate war belongs to Congress. Chesney argues the Soleimani strike is defensible under Article II self-defense given the pattern of escalating attacks on U.S. personnel, provided the factual assertions about Soleimani's role are accurate. Vladeck is more cautious, emphasizing that escalation risk should factor into Article II analysis and expressing concern about the lack of institutional checks -- the executive branch is simultaneously the actor and the legal authority interpreting its own powers, with OLC opinions effectively becoming law due to congressional and judicial abdication. They compare the case to the 2011 killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, noting the critical role of imminent threat assessments. They also discuss how the Obama administration's legal framework from the Libya intervention and the Trump administration's prior strikes on Syrian government forces have progressively expanded executive discretion. The professors express concern that the shifting and contradictory legal justifications offered by different administration officials suggest the decision lacked a rigorous internal legal process.

As heard by us

A careful war powers discussion that turns a use of force into a constitutional problem.

The episode uses a single use of force to open up a larger argument about presidential power, congressional war powers, and where defense ends and offense begins.

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Why you'd press play

The constitutional war-powers line beneath military force debates, unpacked by people who live in the weeds.

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