A MAGA senator who bragged last June that Donald Trump’s airstrikes had set Iran’s nuclear program back by years was forced to eat his words live on CNN to keep up with the latest messaging from the White House.
Host Kaitlan Collins confronted Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas with comments he made last year about the success of airstrikes the president ordered on the Islamic regime’s key nuclear sites.
Referring to the deaths of seven U.S. troops in the Middle East this month as a result of Trump’s war on Iran, as well as Tuesday’s revelation that 140 service members had been wounded so far, Collins said to Marshall, “As you look at that, I think some people ask, why is this happening? Why, why are we at war with Iran right now?”
Republicans have cited an imminent threat from Iran’s nuclear program as one of the reasons for the joint U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign that began on Feb. 28.
Collins then played a clip from an appearance Marshall made on Fox News in June after the president bombed several Iranian nuclear sites, “I think it will take years for Iran to restart their nuclear program. It’s shocking how much damage we did to their facilities,” Marshall said, echoing the White House talking point at the time.
“You said there that you thought it could be years before they could restart their nuclear program,” Collins said to Marshall. “Did you see intelligence that changed your mind now on that?”
“Look, I was wrong,” Marshall said, desperate to toe the Republican Party line on the messaging surrounding the president’s war.
“They were restarting their nuclear program, the reports out of the White House that they were actually starting their nuclear program,” he continued, before acknowledging that there is a cost to war.
“There is a price to pay for freedom. Unfortunately. And I appreciate soldiers being willing to do that.”
The White House has offered up several reasons for the president’s strikes on Iran in addition to preventing the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, including combating terrorism, to counter a preemptive attack, to aid Israel, to enable regime change, and because Iran “just wanted to practice evil.”
The U.S. struck three nuclear sites in Iran—located at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan—last June, which the Trump administration claimed “obliterated” the uranium enrichment facility at Fordow.
The president’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who led negotiations with Tehran prior to the most recent strikes, told CNBC on Tuesday that Iran was “probably a week away” from having nuclear bomb-making material. The president had previously claimed that Iran was developing missiles that could reach the U.S.
At least some of those claims are not backed by U.S. intelligence, insiders told CNN, pointing to a 2025 assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that said Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that at the time of the strikes, Iran was not currently enriching uranium, but said, “They’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.”
A source who spoke to CNN said that intelligence suggests Iran is currently attempting to restore its enrichment capability, but that it would take considerably longer than a week for the country to do so. In addition, the source noted that this work was taking place in sites unlikely to be impacted by strikes.
The U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2025 threat assessment observed that Iran was not constructing a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the strikes, had not reauthorized the weapons program that was suspended in 2003.
“Danger is not the same as imminence,“ a report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft noted on Wednesday. “The public record before this war showed an advanced threshold capability, not a demonstrated rush to build a bomb.”
