Texas Sen. Ted Cruz hung around in the Capitol's Statuary Hall Tuesday night chatting with reporters long after other senators and representatives had departed in the wake of President Obama's fifth State of the Union address. For those seeking another quotable Cruz foray into envelope-pushing nuttiness, he did not disappoint.
Here are Niels Lesniewski and Matt Fuller at
Roll Call:
“I thought that was one of the most dangerous things in the entire speech,” Cruz said of Obama’s commitment to veto new Iran sanctions as talks continue with the international community. “What I fear is that we’re making the mistakes of the past—the same mistakes the Clinton administration made with North Korea. With North Korea, we relaxed the sanctions in exchange for amorphous promises, and the billions that North Korea received in relaxed sanctions, they used to develop nuclear weapons.
“The risk is unacceptable. When you have the leaders of a nation who have said, among other things, they intend to drive Israel into the sea and wipe them off the face of the map—if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the risk is unacceptable that that weapon will be detonated over the skies of Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles,” Cruz said. “The results could be hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost.”
But wait. There's more.
According to Cruz, Iran is a bigger threat than North Korea—which actually has nuclear weapons—because dictator Kim Jong Un, who "wants to stay in power more than anything else," can be deterred and that may not be true of Iran's leadership.
Uh-huh. Iran—where International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have been, today, on the ground checking out one of the nation's uranium mines, with more inspections of other nuclear facilities to come—is more dangerous than North Korea, where the last IAEA visit was 12 years ago. Since then, the North has detonated three nuclear devices. Iran has none.
In Ted Cruz's twisted mind, negotiating an agreement filled with verifiable safeguards to keep things that way is going to lead to mushroom clouds over American cities. In his twisted mind, Iran's leaders want to see their own cities turned into glass. He has a solution: The U.S. should encourage Israel to act militarily against Iran and stand with it against the critics when it does. It would seem he wants to turn Iran's cities into glass.
Unfortunately, although he should be, Cruz isn't alone in that view. As we've seen, way too many Democrats are willing to sign onto legislation that binds the United States to doing exactly what he says: backing up an Israeli attack on Iran. When will they ever learn?