Biden extends another national emergency, this time related to WMDs

President Joe Biden has extended another national emergency, this time related to threats posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Lately, nearly every week, the president has been extending national emergencies that most Americans didn’t even know existed, including one related to Iran that’s been ongoing since 1979.

In nearly all executive orders he issues to extend a preexisting national emergency, he cites the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) granting him authorization to do so. The law, which was enacted in 1977, gives presidents sweeping powers.

Under the IEEPA, the U.S. has been in a perpetual state of dozens of national emergencies for various reasons for nearly 50 years, which were extended by multiple presidents.

In this case, the U.S. has been in a perpetual state of national emergency after former President Bill Clinton issued an executive order declaring a national emergency related to WMDs on Nov. 14, 1994. Clinton amended and extended the order four years later “to respond more effectively to the worldwide threat of weapons of mass destruction proliferation activities.”

Former President George W. Bush next extended and amended Clinton’s order on June 28, 2005, “to improve our ability to combat proliferation.” This was after Bush argued it was necessary for the U.S. to invade Iraq because it had WMDs, which no one found.

Even after the colossal intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and subsequent failures related to the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war is also considered to represent another extensive failure of the intelligence community. The consequences of the conflict were equally disastrous. After nearly nine years of conflict and $728 billion in costs to the U.S. taxpayers, 4,492 U.S. service members were killed and nearly 32,300 were wounded, according to U.S. Department of Defense data. More than 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, and more than two million Iraqis were displaced because of the conflict, according to Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Three years after U.S. forces left Iraq, former President Barack Obama sent U.S. troops back to Iraq to combat a new terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Ten years later, U.S. troops are still combatting ISIS and conflict in the region continues.

Despite decades of war, thousands of U.S. troops killed, and the U.S. spending more than $1.6 trillion on unresolved conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, “The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Biden’s executive order states. “For this reason, the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12938 of November 14, 1994, with respect to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering such weapons must continue beyond November 14, 2024.”

Biden extended the WMD national emergency for another year without mentioning any specific threats.

As of Jan. 15, 2024, U.S. presidents have issued executive orders for 69 national emergencies under the IEEPA, according to the Congressional Research Service, The Center Square reported.

Roughly half, 39, are ongoing. National emergencies invoked through the IEEPA “often last nearly a decade, although some have lasted significantly longer – the first state of emergency declared under the NEA and IEEPA, which was declared in response to the taking of U.S. embassy staff as hostages by Iran in 1979, is in its fifth decade,” according to CRS.