GOP Sen. McCormick on Why Strikes Would Be Needed if Iran Nuke Program Obliterated: Strikes Did ‘Significant Damage’ That Set It Back

During an interview with CBS’s “The Takeout” on Thursday, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) responded to a question on why we would need more strikes on the Iranian nuclear program if it was obliterated last year by saying that last year’s strikes resulted in “significant damage done on the nuclear capabilities. It wasn’t clear whether they had set them back one year, two years, three years,” “Iran has built an enormous missile capability, which it has used in the past on Israel and others”, and they underwrite terror proxies.

Host and CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett asked, “The president said, over and over, the nuclear capabilities in Iran were obliterated. If they were, why would we need to go back?”

McCormick responded, “Well, I think two things: I think, number one, I think it was always said, at the time, that there had been significant damage done on the nuclear capabilities. It wasn’t clear whether they had set them back one year, two years, three years, but it had set them back significant[ly]. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Second is, Iran has built an enormous missile capability, which it has used in the past on Israel and others. So, there’s clearly an enormous military capability there. It’s been greatly eroded by the previous actions, but they’re still — they pose significant military risk. And, again, they’ve threatened — they’ve not only threatened to use that, they have been the source of underwriting terror, terrorist proxies across the Middle East for decades.”

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