Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) on Wednesday evening suggested he is open to Iran retaining some non-nuclear weapons in the peace deal it is negotiating with the United States.
The senator’s take on the matter echoes President Donald Trump’s position. The president said earlier Wednesday he could be on board with Iran having some ballistic missiles in a final peace deal, after a 60-day interim agreement was reached Sunday and formalized Wednesday evening, bringing the Iran war to a halt and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The short-term memorandum of understanding appears aimed at offering negotiators from both countries time to hash out details on Iran’s nuclear program, which is the key focal point of the conflict.
When pressed on Iran having ballistic missiles during a CNN interview, Marshall said, ”You know, I’m hesitating.”
“I sort of don’t want them to have long-distance missiles. I don’t want them to have nuclear-armed missiles,” said Marshall. “I would prefer they didn’t, but I don’t think that’s the key issue here. I think that they have to be able to defend themselves, and I just kind of come back to the big picture here, is that the Middle East countries like this agreement. I think Iran needs to be able to defend itself. Otherwise, we turn this into a forever war.”
“You’re never going to get them short of boots on the ground of surrendering everything, an unconditional agreement, if you will, but again, what I’m getting at here is this agreement has the support of all the most of the countries in the Middle East, and I think that’s going to give it more of a long-lasting relationship, a long-lasting success as well,” he added.
When asked if he agreed with a piece of the deal lifting sanctions on Iran and allowing it to sell oil, Marshall replied, “Absolutely.” The senator reiterated that the agreement signed electronically by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday is a “trial period” that can snap back sanctions should key sticking points, including on Iran’s nuclear program, fail to be hashed out by the end of 60 days.
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“Would I give them $30 billion of their own money back for them to agree to never build a nuclear weapon? Of course, I’ll take that deal every time,” he said. “We’ll see what happens in 60 days. I understand there’s a lot more to be written out. I don’t know what the final document is going to look like, but at the end of the day, the shooting has stopped. Gas prices … grocery prices are starting to come down as well. And again, we’ve, this is a 110-day war. I wish it had only been two days, but it’s certainly not a forever war. And Americans are glad to see us go on to the next page here.”
“This is the trust but verify portion of this, as long as they meet all the other conditions of it, we can keep doing that, but then we can slap them back on again,” Marshall added. “This president has proved over and over again that he can snap these sanctions back.”