March 03, 2026 12:21 PM UTC

Jeff Crank Supports Trump Rationale for Iran War...Whatever It Is

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• by: Colorado Pols

Congressman Jeff Crank (R-Colo. Springs) is determined to prove to President Trump that he can be a better toadie than fellow freshman Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton).

Crank was a guest on the right-wing “Jeff and Bill Show” on Monday to discuss the decision by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu President Trump to attack Iran. Crank is fully supportive of the Iran War, even though the Trump administration can’t figure out how to explain it themselves. As The Washington Post reports today:

As an expanding Middle East war entered its fourth day, the Trump administration gave shifting rationales for its decision to attack Iran, even as U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports said they saw no sign the country had posed an imminent threat to the United States.

President Donald Trump and his top national security aides, defending a conflict that has tepid public backing and is incurring escalating risks, emphasized Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles rather than its nuclear program as the principal threat. But they provided different descriptions of the danger.

At his first public event since the attack began, Trump on Monday never mentioned a key part of his original rationale for the war: deposing Iran’s theocratic regime.

Instead, he emphasized that Iran would “soon” have missiles that could hit targets inside the United States.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on Monday that this was “not a so-called regime change war”:

Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon that the Islamic republic was building sophisticated missiles and other conventional weapons to shield its plans for a nuclear bomb. “Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb,” he said.

Apparently we’re supposed to just pretend that the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency did not say just last year that Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile…by 2035.

What say you, Secretary of State Marco “Imminent Threat” Rubio?

The United States, he said, knew Israel was going to strike Iran, which would lead to counterattacks against U.S. forces and potential casualties, and decided to strike first to minimize the risk.

Israel was going to attack Iran, and we didn’t want to be left out!

If the Trump administration has a coherent narrative about why we attacked Iran or what happens next, they’re not sharing those talking points with anyone else — including Jeff Crank. But that’s okay, because Crank is fine with whatever! As he told the “Jeff and Bill Show”:

CRANK: Well, you know, I obviously no one wants to see it come to this, and it is obviously very sad that we’ve already lost some service members. But you know that we have to make sure that that their sacrifice isn’t in vain and that, you know what we see this through, that we make this something that that lasts for both the Middle East and for the United States.

And look, I’m supportive of this operation. I think the president, you know, didn’t have a choice. [Pols emphasis] You know, this has been coming for many, many years. I see intelligence on the committees that I sit on, that I think if most people saw, they would see and understand the threat. This is a regime that has continued to try and exterminate the nation of Israel. But also, you know, they chant death to America too.

Crank says he thinks President Trump should have maybe discussed this with Congress, but whatevs:

CRANK: I just think this president, you know, is doing it in a way that he really just didn’t have a choice. And so I’m going to be supportive of him and supportive of our men and women in the military as they move forward. I wish there would have been a resolution authorizing it beforehand, and I think we could have gotten the votes here.

Sure, Jeff. Congress would have jumped all over approving a war that 75% of Americans don’t want. Please tell us more!

CRANK: I try to give wide latitude to presidents because I love my country enough to do that. The Constitution, I won’t say that it’s vague, but it purposefully, our founders purposefully set up….the friction in the system.

They provided in Article 1 the right of Congress to declare war, and that that’s something that they gave to Congress. But they also, in Article 2, said that the President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief. And going back to Thomas Jefferson. The president has used that authority without Congress on numerous occasions. There was no formal declaration of war during the first Barbary War in 1801, when Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States. There was not formal declaration of war when James Madison sent forces in in the War of 1812. Congress did eventually come around and declare war, much like we can do now in this situation. So this is not anything new. It’s the tug of the Constitution, right? It’s that friction that our founders set up in the Constitution. It’s a good thing, it’s a healthy thing, we ought to embrace it.

If it was good enough for the Barbary Wars, it’s good enough for Jeff Crank!

How long will this totally-not endless war last, Jeff?

CRANK: Well, I think that the president was pretty clear and the Secretary of War was clear this morning in his briefing that it will last as long as it takes, that they aren’t going to put a timeline on it. I think the President did say, you know, it could go four weeks, but it could, it could do six weeks. It could go, it, could go eight weeks. Who knows how long it will go. It will go until we’re, uh, we’ve, we’d met our objectives. [Pols emphasis] And, uh that’s, that’s important to say, but I think the American people shouldn’t expect this to be over by next weekend.

When will it end? Not by the weekend!

Can you equivocate some more, Jeff? Of course you can!

CRANK: It was very clear the moment that this happened, it was not the United States that went after the regime. It was Israel itself that went after cutting off the command and control structure, going after the Ayatollah and others in that government. That’s something that obviously is something that the Israelis did. [Pols emphasis]

It’s not, I don’t think, something that we are saying is one of our stated goals, but obviously it’s a good side effect and that’s going to have to happen. So to me, the stated goals are to reduce that threat so that defang the military in the capability to deliver and project…warheads and drones and other things that are capable of hitting our assets in the region, as well as their nuclear capability. Those are the U.S. Goals. I think, obviously, it would be a very good side effect is if this regime, which is now I think decapitated, were replaced.

Yes, we definitely needed to destroy the Iranian nuclear program that we already, um, “destroyed” in June 2025.

Jeff Crank couldn’t be more embarrassing if he stopped wearing pants.