Republican Sen. Roger Marshall (Kansas) said in an interview on Wednesday that President Donald Trump faces issues on par with those of World War II with regard to the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, seeming to suggest that Trump should nuke Iran in order to prevent the country from ever having nuclear weapons.
Marshall was asked by a Newsmax anchor if he believes that the U.S. military will “have to go in and finish this job” if negotiations between the U.S. and Iran for a permanent ceasefire continue for several more weeks.
“I think that’s right,” said the senator. “Previous presidents have had the same issues on what to do. Think about President Truman’s decision on dropping the bomb, and D-Day for President Eisenhower.”
“You’ve got to take everything into consideration,” Marshall said, including whether negotiations are “truly making progress or not.”
Earlier in the interview, the senator said that the U.S.’s aggression against Iran is necessary because “Iran can never, never, ever have a nuclear weapon.”
“If Iran had a nuclear weapon, gasoline would be $10 a gallon, and for generations to come, Americans’ lives would be threatened,” the lawmaker said.
The statements echo Trump’s genocidal rhetoric toward Iran, including his threat to “blow up the rest of their Country” if negotiations falter on Tuesday. Legal experts have said that Trump’s indiscriminate threats against Iran as a whole, as well as his pledges to target civilian infrastructure like power plants, constitute threats to commit war crimes.
Marshall also bragged about the harm that the U.S. is causing civilians with Trump’s blockade on Iran.
“We also have this embargo working as well, the blockade, and we’re literally starving them,” said Marshall, “both financially and they can’t feed themselves either, very long.”
The use of starvation as a weapon of war is prohibited under international law.
The UN indeed warned last month that an additional 45 million people may be “pushed into acute hunger by price rises” if the conflict and closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue through June, adding to the already record high of 319 million people currently facing acute food insecurity. Iran previously pledged to open passage through the strait as a term of the temporary ceasefire agreement, but is still prohibiting ships from crossing due to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and the U.S.’s blockade of Iranian ports, which Iranian officials have said are both violations of the ceasefire.
Republicans have previously called for the usage of nuclear weapons with impunity. Last May, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Florida), said that Israel should drop a nuclear weapon on Gaza. “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here,” he said. “There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture and it needs to be defeated.”
The staunchly pro-Israel lawmaker’s statements were condemned by rights advocates — but, just weeks later, Republican leaders granted him a seat on the high-powered House Foreign Affairs Committee.
This followed a remark by another Republican House lawmaker, Rep. Tim Walberg (Michigan), who said in March of 2024 that Gaza should be attacked “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”
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