Q&A: Rep. Jason Crow on the attacks in Iran

DENVER — The United States entered Israel’s war against Iran over the weekend after President Donald Trump ordered air strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

Trump announced the bombing, which he described as a “very successful attack,” on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns. The decision to strike Iran marks an escalation in the years-long effort from Israel and the U.S. to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. 

Israel and Iran began trading missile fire after Israel’s June 13 surprise attack on Iran. Trump has promised for years not to enter yet another conflict in the Middle East. But Republicans were quick to show their support for entering the war.
 

“I fully support actions taken to prevent an evil regime from being able to harm us, Israel, and our other allies,” said Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican.

Some Republicans, however, spoke out against the attack. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, called the strikes "not Constitutional." Trump is now advocating for Massie’s ouster. 

“American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change, foreign wars, and for military industrial base profits. I’m sick of it,” said Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, usually a vocal supporter of Trump’s agenda.

Following the attack, the president’s cabinet insisted a regime change in Iran was not their end goal. 

However, Trump posted Monday morning, “if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???”

Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former U.S. Army officer who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the only member of Colorado’s congressional delegation on the House Intelligence Committee. He said he was not notified about the strike on Iran ahead of time.

“Congress must act now & reclaim constitutional power over America's use of military force,” Crow posted after the attack.

Rocky Mountain PBS spoke to Crow the morning of June 23 to discuss the attack, the Democratic Party’s response and if he agrees with some of his colleagues that the president’s decision to bomb Iran is an impeachable offense. 

Iran launched missiles toward a U.S. military base in Qatar Monday, but Qatar’s air defenses intercepted the attack. Hours after Rocky Mountain PBS interviewed Crow, Trump announced that Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire.

Rep. Jason Crow: Well, first of all, are you telling me that the administration is sending out contradictory messages and aren’t all on the same page? 

JC: [Laughs softly.] Yeah, well I mean this is a very dangerous game for the administration to be playing with American lives and national security and war powers, to not even have a plan and not know the right hand from the left hand. So this is serious stuff and this is why having competent, experienced people matters. And of course, this administration does not have that. 

They’ve gutted the National Security Council. Most of the senior leadership with the Department of Defense has resigned in protest over the last couple of months, and we are on the verge of a large scale conflict with one of the largest militaries in the world and it's very disconcerting, to say the least, that the president has put us into this position without thinking it through.

And as I mentioned in my Tweet, I have not seen any evidence that Iran posed an imminent risk to the United States — that is the threshold that has to be met for the president under Article II of the Constitution to take unilateral military action without consulting Congress. There's been no intelligence that has been provided to me that would indicate such an imminent risk. 

JC:  Which one? You just asked me two questions there. 

JC: Yeah, based on what I know, and have been briefed, there is no imminent threat posed by Iran, which means that under the Constitution and the War Powers Act, he [President Trump] was required to come to Congress to get approval, which he did not do.

And let's also just take a step back for a moment and look at why this matters, because obviously adhering to the Constitution always is important and always matters, but it also matters for the daily life of Americans because we just spent over two decades — 20 years — at war. 

We spent $3 trillion [and] thousands of American lives fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I served three combat tours as an infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we never — for at least the last 15 years of those wars — never had open public debates about whether or not we should continue to do it and spend taxpayer dollars and American lives.

So it matters because the framers of the Constitution said for the most consequential decision, which is the decision to send American troops to war and to engage in war, it should be made by those closest to the American people, and those most accountable to the American people. Those are members of Congress that every week have to fly home and be accountable, answer tough questions, stand before their constituents in high school gymnasiums around the country and say why we're doing this and why it's important to do. And if we can't get support then we shouldn't be doing it, but that's why this is important 

JC: Well, you know, I was an impeachment manager in the first impeachment of Donald Trump so, I've been there. I've done that. That's not what I'm focusing on right now. What I'm focusing on is asserting congressional authority over matters of war, peace, and reestablishing the guard rails that the framers of our Constitution were so careful to put in. 

JC: No, I don't think it's fair to say. I think the reason why there's so much concern for the process is because without process, you get poor outcomes. And the outcome is what I'm the most concerned about. What is the endgame? What is the administration’s strategy? How is this going to make Americans safer?

One thing we've learned is that you can't bomb your way out of foreign policy issues. The United States has a terrible track record in the last few decades of engaging in regime change and nation-building. So Donald Trump's most recent Truth Social post that he is thinking about pursuing regime change — why in the hell would America want to engage in that after what happened in the last 20 years? I mean the simple fact of the matter is they don't. Americans have no appetite for that because we know it ends poorly. It spends tons of taxpayer dollars, American lives and credibility. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of the last 20 years. 

JC: Well, I found out about it on Truth Social just like everybody else. 

JC: Well, it's fair to say that there is drastically less communication and engagement with Congress than any other administration certainly in my time in Congress. [Rep. Crow has been in Congress since January 3, 2019.] But even under the first Trump administration there was more engagement with Congress than there is now. They have, for all intents and purposes, blocked congressional oversight, whether that's responding to our letters, inviting us to visit at the agencies — it is dramatically less transparent and engaging than at any other time of my time in Congress. 

JC: My message is very simple: I share that fatigue. I don't want to engage in endless open conflict. I don't want to spend taxpayer dollars, precious American lives doing things that are not going to turn out well. We've learned really tough lessons and made mistakes and learned that the hard way the last 20 years. And we've seen how that ends — it does not end well.

And then one of the things that I take the most seriously as a member of Congress from Colorado is making sure I'm asking the tough questions and holding administrations accountable for these decisions. Because, you know, when decisions are made in Washington — I started my career as a private, I ended as a captain — I learned that when comfortable elites make decisions in Washington and saber-rattle and pound their chest in air-conditioned offices on either Capitol Hill or the mall, it's young men and women that have to go somewhere in the world to do the work and get it done. And I take that very seriously. It’s not an abstraction for me. 

JC: Well, I'm hopeful that we don't engage in a large-scale war with Iran because that would not serve our interests and I think it would cause a lot of problems with the United States. So we need to have this de-escalated.

And let's not forget that we're here because Donald Trump pulled us out of the nuclear deal in the first Trump administration, a deal that actually provided inspections and oversight that limited Iranian capability to develop nuclear weapons and enrich uranium. That was a deal that established a ceiling and Donald Trump pulled us out of that deal, so here we are. 

JC: Yeah, this one's very simple. So what happened after 9/11 is Congress granted what is called an Authorization for Use of Military Force to the then-Bush administration. That AUMF, as they're called, has now been used for over 20 years by multiple administrations — Republican and Democrat — over 10 Congresses and it's extended so far beyond its original intended purpose, which was to respond to 9/11, and is now being used to support military operations in dozens of places around the world and counterterrorism operations.

So it has essentially become a blank check for presidential authority and use of force. I would like to see that repealed and replaced with a much more limited authorization and an authorization that forces Congress to take it up and vote on it at regular intervals so we can have transparency and accountability, and have the national conversation that we haven't had in a very long time.