Senator Marco Rubio confronts a CBS host on Face the Nation, arguing that 60% enriched uranium and ICBMs prove Iran possesses everything needed for nuclear weapons despite lacking a confirmed weaponization order. Citing March assessments and IAEA violations, he contrasts his firm stance with past criticisms of Tulsi Gabbard while noting shifting progressive views. The discussion highlights Israel's recent dismantling of Iranian air defenses, which lowered oil prices, yet criticizes media outlets like the New York Times for escalating narratives that ignore the genuine threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Iran's Nuclear Ambition00:06:59
As all of this happens, however, you know, you have members of the media that are stuck in their way, much like AOC, and they're stuck on this sort of TDS syndrome.
And one of them actually got really torpedoed, interestingly, on her own program yesterday by Senator Marco Rubio.
So this is on the Face the Nation program that CBS has.
You know, of course, CBS is struggling with whether or not it's going to settle with Donald Trump.
They may have to pay like up to $50 million to settle with him.
And it's become the source of a lot of.
Internal aggravation.
And so I mention that only because you can imagine that this particular host, as she went into her program and knew she had Secretary of State Rubio on there, there's a lot of pressure perhaps internally to make sure that they're always giving the other side.
And hey, look, there's nothing wrong with that.
We should hear all sides.
It was just kind of amusing how he struck her down so vehemently and she clung to her position.
And at some point, he's kind of like, look, who's Secretary of State, is it me or you, honey?
Well, he didn't say exactly that.
That's my paraphrasing.
But let's watch exactly what Marco Rubio had to say to the CBS host on Face the Nation.
Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the Supreme Leader had ordered weaponization?
That's irrelevant.
I think that question being asked in the media, that's an irrelevant question.
That's a key point in U.S. intelligence assessments.
You know that.
No, it's not.
Yes, it was.
No, it's not.
Political decision.
I know that better than you know that, and I know that that's not the case.
But I'm asking you whether the order was given.
And the people who say that, it doesn't matter if the order was given.
They have everything they need to build nuclear weapons.
Why would you bury things in a mountain 300 feet under the ground?
Why do they have 60% enriched uranium?
You don't need 60% enriched uranium.
The only countries in the world that have uranium at 60% are countries that have nuclear weapons because they can quickly make it 90%.
They have all the elements.
Why do they have a space program?
Is Iran going to go to the moon?
No.
They're trying to build an ICBM.
No, but that's a question of intent.
And you know, in the intelligence assessment, it was that Iran wanted to be a threshold state.
How do you know what the intelligence assessment says?
I'm talking about a public March assessment.
And that's why I was asking you if you know something more from a March assessment.
But that's also an inaccurate representation of it.
That's an inaccurate representation of it.
That's not how intelligence is read.
That's not how intelligence is used.
Here's what the whole world knows.
Forget about intelligence.
What the IAEA knows they are enriching uranium.
well beyond anything you need for a civil nuclear program.
So why would you enrich uranium at 60% if you don't intend to one day use it to take it to 90 and build a weapon?
Why are you developing ICBMs?
Why do you have 8,000 short-range missiles and 2,000 to 3,000 mid-range missiles that you continue to develop?
Why do you do all these things?
They have everything they need for a nuclear weapon.
They have the delivery mechanisms.
They have the enrichment capability.
They have the highly enriched uranium that is stored.
That's all we need to see.
Especially in the hands of the regime that's already involved in terrorism and proxies and all kinds of things around.
They are the source of all of this stuff.
Yes, and no one's disputing that.
I'm not doing that here.
And they were censured at the IAEA for that enrichment and for violating their nonproliferation agreements.
I was simply asking if we had intelligence that there was an order to weaponize, because you said weaponization ambition is necessary.
No, we have intelligence that they have everything they need to build a nuclear weapon, and that's more than enough.
Okay.
So that's an interesting distinction, right?
And don't forget a lot of folks on the left who hated Tulsi Gabbard, right?
Like they absolutely despised her and they thought that she was a threat, et cetera, et cetera.
And it was in part because she didn't recognize back in March that Iran was this nuclear threat that they came out so vehemently against her.
And they thought, okay, well, she can't.
Why do we have this woman as our head of the Department of National Intelligence?
So there was a lot of pushback then, but kind of like the same crowd is now echoing what she said.
And she's come out and said, Look, you know, things change and the assessment has changed, and we don't need to drive this wedge.
The president has information that he believes that it was indeed Iran was indeed in the process of trying to create a nuclear weapon.
And whether or not they had it or whether or not they were close to having it, I think Marco Rubio is making it really clear we don't care.
The point is they want it and they're working towards it.
So let's do what we can.
Peacefully enough, as we have this opportunity, their air defense was completely taken out by Israel.
So we can go in there and we can dismantle their program.
And that is what happened.
And again, I can be agnostic in this.
I'm going to tell you what the market thinks.
The market likes it.
Oil prices are down.
I mean, can you believe that we're down 8% on WTI?
That's amazing, right?
And the market's up because the belief is we're getting closer to peace.
But there's going to be the holdouts.
There's going to be the media.
As I read the paper the next morning, the New York Times, it said that the US had entered war with Iran.
Well, the administration is making it very clear that they don't want this to be a war and that there is an opportunity for Iran to come to the table and not be in that kind of situation.
So, why is it that everybody immediately escalates it to that?
And it may just be, again, TDS on steroids.
And you're seeing that whether it's from the media, you're seeing that whether it's from AOC, certain kind of Democrats that want to make their career out of this.
I would just remind them again, let's go back to Van Jones on CNN because he said it better than anyone.
The progressives need to get it through their head what's really at stake.
I think progressives underestimate how dangerous Iran is.
Iran is not a normal country.
They cannot have a bomb.
And I think progressives should get on board with that.
We cannot have a nuclear armed Iran.
I was in the region.
You were in the region.
This is a very Dangerous power that cannot get a nuclear weapon.
Yeah.
I mean, well said.
Okay.
Again, and this is a guy who's a big deal Democrat.
So I think it's important that everybody kind of coalesce around this idea that less nuclear stuff out there, the better.
And you don't want a country that has aspirations of wiping other countries off the earth having access and ability and power to do that.
That's pretty darn simple.
But again, not everybody believes this.
And AOC is certainly one out there who's using this as an opportunity to knock Trump.