Rep. Rich McCormick, a Marine and Navy veteran who deployed to the Persian Gulf and is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, dismissed the new U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding as a hollow arrangement that hands Tehran time to rebuild.
In an interview on Thursday, McCormick stated he favors unconditional surrender and a methodical campaign to dismantle the regime’s energy backbone. He described the Islamic Republic as an enemy that openly seeks America’s destruction.
“They see us as the great Satan,” McCormick said. “They want to destroy us. They’ve told us this openly. They planned for that openly. They know they can lie to us. And, as a matter of fact, we’re infidels.”
The framework signed by President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on June 17 pauses fighting for 60 days, calls for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and defers core nuclear questions to follow-on talks.
McCormick said Iran has signaled it will use the pause period to reconstitute its ballistic missile program, which U.S. and Israeli strikes degraded during Operation Epic Fury. “They’ve openly said since the war… now they’re going to repursue their ballistic missile systems, that they’re going to rebuild everything we destroyed,” he stated.
“This is not a good-faith agreement by any sort.” U.S. intelligence assessments reported by The Wall Street Journal indicate Tehran is digging out buried launchers and aims to rebuild missile capabilities during the ceasefire.
He took particular aim at routing verification back through the International Atomic Energy Agency. “The IAEA was created in 1957, and it was supposed to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” McCormick added. “Well, that didn’t work out. They failed their inspections for nuclear weapons in Iran, Iraq, and they failed in Iran. Iran tricked them.”
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi recently stated that inspections of damaged Iranian sites will take place under the memorandum, but Tehran disputes U.S. claims about timing and scope.
McCormick compared the current situation to pre-2003 Iraq. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes,” he said. “Saddam Hussein ‘didn’t have nuclear arms’ but pretended otherwise to deter Iran.”
Asked what he would do instead of negotiation, McCormick called for regime change through a punishing campaign against civilian infrastructure. “This is going to sound harsh,” he added. “I believe in unconditional surrender… But in order to save a million lives in Japan, we dropped bombs that killed 100,000 civilians in one night.”
