Because the soldering iron in question dissipates 100W, and 100W is a substantial amount of power?
If a soldering iron is drawing 100W from a 2S pair of 18650 batteries, then:
The cells are supplying ~13.5A of current through their contacts.
To get below 5A, we'd need a six 18650s in a 6S configuration. Certainly doable (a relatively inexpensive [for a packaged battery] 24V Kobalt power tool battery has 6S 18650s), but beginning to be chonky.