Newt Gingrich and RIck Santorum sandwich Rick Perry. (Getty)

Iran was the first issue on the table in tonight’s CBS News/National Journal presidential debate. Newt Gingrich suggested addressing the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program with “maximum covert operations” that could be denied later on and Rick Santorum said he hoped we were already killing scientists and infecting their computers.  Mr. Gingrich said the first part of his plan for Iran would be  ”maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems.”

“All of it covertly, all of it deniable.,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Later on in the debate, Mr. Santorum said he sees evidence these types of top secret missions are already taking place in both Iran and the former Soviet Union. He really, really hopes we had something to do with it.

“You know there have been scientists turning up dead in Russia and Iran, there have been computer viruses, there have been problems at their facility. I hope that the United States has been involved with that. I hope that we’ve been doing everything we can covertly to make sure that program doesn’t proceed forward,” Mr. Santorum said.

Both men were willing to consider the option of more direct military action in Iran.

“If, in the end, despite all those things, the dictatorship persists, you have–you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Mr. Santorum wants Israel to start dropping bombs on Iran right now. “We should be working with Israel right now to do what they did in Syria, what they did in Iraq, which is take out that nuclear capability,” Mr. Santorum said, adding, ”Before the next explosion we hear in Iran is a nuclear one and the world changes.”

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