President Donald Trump was the “right man” to make sure that Iran doesn’t get nuclear weapons, Fox News and radio host Mark Levin said on Sunday.
While discussing the necessity of making sure the Islamic Republic doesn’t get capacity to have nuclear weapons with Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (R), Levin also said that he has “complete faith in Donald Trump on this.”
Cotton, an Iraq War veteran who is the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and sits on the Armed Services Committee, has always been a fierce opponent of Iran’s potential capacity for a nuclear weapon. He led the opposition against former President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran that allowed the rogue regime to continue its quest for nuclear weapons.
“I’m not asking you to violate any secrets, obviously, or anything of that sort. Is Iran really close to having a nuclear weapon and is that something we should take seriously? Or, as some people say, ‘It’s very manageable. Don’t be a warmonger. Don’t interfere. Don’t be a neo-con. Just let the good little terrorists do whatever they’re going to do and we’ll be just fine,’” Levin asked.
“Mark, Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon, and it’s something that we should fear and that we shouldn’t tolerate. Donald Trump’s been very clear about this; for as long as he’s been in politics, going back 10 years. In fact, the first conversation I ever had with Donald Trump, he was coming to Arkansas to speak at a Republican party dinner. I happened to be going to Vienna that weekend to meet with the International Atomic Energy Agency. And he called me and he said that the one thing we can’t do is let Iran have a nuclear weapon. And he’s been clear about that publicly over and over again because Iran is not a normal nation. It’s a fanatical theocratic dictatorship. And if they get nuclear weapons, they’re likely to use them,” Cotton responded.
In describing how close the regime is to having a nuke, Cotton said that “[T]hey have enough enriched uranium now that they could probably produce enough weapons-grade in just a matter of days, maybe a few weeks. And then it’s only a matter of marrying up that nuclear weapon to the missiles they already have that can reach our friends in Israel and throughout the Middle East.”
Cotton continued that it gets even worse, since Iran has “a space launch program which is really just flimsy cover for a ballistic missile program, and they’re probably just a few years away from having missiles that could hit us here in the United States, that could hit Florida or Arkansas or Washington, D.C. So it is a grave threat, not just to our friends in the Middle East but to the United States itself. And that’s why President Trump has been completely clear that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
“And Mark, I think it’s important to remember how we got to this point as well. We got here because of the terrible Obama deal with Iran that allowed them to enrich uranium, that allowed them to keep all their centrifuges, that allowed them to continue research into ballistic missiles,” Cotton continued. “President Trump has been clear that Iran has no reason to enrich uranium. They therefore have no reason to keep their centrifuges, and they certainly have no reason to be developing intercontinental missiles that could hit the United States. If Iran is willing to make a deal on those terms, and as President Trump said last week, we can have peace and they can live happily without death. But if they insist on keeping all that enriched uranium and all those centrifuges and their missile program, as he has said, we’re going to have to take a different path.”
Levin responded, “[I]n other words, they need to dismantle this, and it needs to be provable in a way in the past it hasn’t been provable, cause they cheat and they lie and they steal. I mean, after all, they are terrorists and just because they signed a piece of paper, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll sign whatever you give us. Oh, that all you have? Sure, sure, sure,’ it means absolutely nothing. I have complete faith in Donald Trump on this; he’s the right man at the right time. I have complete faith in [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu; he’s the right man at the right time. And I think there’s a lot of static out there by a cabal of individuals who seem to think that nuclear weapons in the hands of an enemy — not just any enemy, but one that doesn’t believe in mutually assured destruction, it just believes in destruction — is manageable or it’s OK. And I’m not willing to bet our country, society, my children and grandchildren, on that. Are you?”
Cotton replied with a blunt, firm “no.”
“Absolutely not, Mark. And I agree with you: I have confidence in President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu; they understand the stakes here; they understand that the only acceptable deal is one in which Iran dismantles its nuclear program, turns over its enriched uranium, turns over its centrifuges, stops ballistic missile research,” Cotton said, adding that the U.S. has done this before in Libya.
“Libya did the exact same thing in 2003. It was scared straight; it threw open the doors, let us come in and take away all of its nuclear programs as well as biological and chemical weapons programs as well. And we took Libya off the list of state sponsors of terrorism; we lifted sanctions on them. They became a de facto ally, even though Muammar Khadafi still had a lot of American blood on his hands in the past. There’s a clear model of what a good, enforceable, verifiable deal would look like here. It does not involve any enrichment of uranium, or Iran possessing centrifuges or continuing its production of ballistic missiles. That’s the kind of deal that President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have both been clear about for many years,” Cotton said.
Levin then asked rhetorically why they won’t dismantle their program if they don’t want to build weapons, to which Cotton replied that “[T]hey claim they want a nuclear energy program; there are plenty of countries around the world that have nuclear energy and don’t enrich uranium, that don’t have centrifuges, that acquire it [nuclear energy] from countries that do. There’s no reason for Iran, as you say, to have this vast nuclear infrastructure. That’s why they’re only a few months away from getting the bomb. It’s what Barack Obama let them get.”
“They’re liars, they’re thieves, and they’re terrorists. That’s what the regime is. That’s the bottom line,” Levin stated.
This is just a clip of a segment of Mark Levin's show tonight along with Senator Tom Cotton. Just take five minutes to watch this. It's quite disturbing. pic.twitter.com/tqYcFuaejx
— Diz'ard (@Picklecreekdam) April 21, 2025
Editor's Note: Every single day, here at Townhall, we will stand up and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT against the radical left and deliver the conservative reporting our readers deserve.
Help us continue to tell the truth about the Trump administration and its major wins. Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member