The effects of nuclear forces (in contrast to pure Coulomb interaction) on the ion heating rate which results from small-angle scattering processes between charged particles in plasmas are investigated within the framework of Fokker-Planck theory. These effects are included through the addition of analytic Coulomb-nuclear interference and nuclear elastic cross sections in the scattering integrals of the dynamical friction coefficient and dispersion tensor. It is found that corrections to traditional Fokker-Planck predictions of the ion-ion energy exchange rate can be calculated and that these corrections are sensitive to the choice of the maximum scattering angle defining the cutoff between small- and large-angle scattering.