Cruz: 'The deep state' moves against Trump policy and to save Iran deal

Sen.Ted Cruz: "... the deep state is alive and well and has circled the barricades around Washington DC and the number one objective... is to preserve the disastrous Obama Iran deal."

By OMRI NAHMIAS
The ceremonial swearing in of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the Old Senate Chambers at the U.S. Capitol, January 3rd, 2019. (photo credit: JACK GRUBER-USA TODAY VIA REUTERS)
The ceremonial swearing in of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the Old Senate Chambers at the U.S. Capitol, January 3rd, 2019.
(photo credit: JACK GRUBER-USA TODAY VIA REUTERS)
WASHINGTON – Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) warned Tuesday that restoring the 2015 nuclear deal would be “a massive, massive mistake,” and pointed his finger at the “deep state” for trying to prevent US President Donald Trump from fulfilling his policy.
In a conversation with Middle East expert Mike Doran at the Hudson Institute in Washington, Cruz said that he is considering the threat of a nuclear Iran to be the most significant national security threat facing America, and commended Trump for withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“There was a major battle over whether to pull out of that agreement,” said Cruz. “Both the State Department and Defense Department argued for staying in that agreement. I argued vigorously directly with the president to pull out of this agreement. Thankfully, the president made the bold and courageous choice, and pulled out of the agreement. However, the battle was not done yet.
“There may be some folks here who have heard of the deep state,” he continued. “I’m here to tell you the deep state is alive and well and has circled the barricades around Washington, DC – and the number one objective of the deep state at the Department of State and the Department of Treasury is to preserve the disastrous Obama Iran nuclear deal. Every single day, the deep state at Treasury and State is working to frustrate president Trump’s decision.”
According to Cruz, one of the ways in which officials in these departments are trying to save the deal is by convincing the administration to issue oil wavers allowing Iran to sell a million barrels of oil per day. “Because when you’ve got the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism who wants to murder you and is trying to amass the tools to do so, it’s a good idea to let him sell a million barrels of oil a day,” Cruz said, sarcastically.
As French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian is lobbying Washington to agree for a $15b. credit line for Tehran in exchange for full compliance with the deal, Cruz warned that “the reports are rampant that the White House might be fooled into accepting this deal. I hope and pray that is not the case.
“I hope and pray that Steven Mnuchin is not deceived, and that he does not go down a path that would lead him to be the Neville Chamberlain of the modern day. There is a reason that nobody studies at the Neville Chamberlain School of Foreign Policy: because appeasing a lunatic rarely ends well.”
He called for the treasury secretary “to have a clear and simple answer for the French, which is: No matter how much a handful of French companies may stand to make from doing business with the Ayatollah, America is not going to be part of funding the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Nor are we going to fund the development of nuclear weapons and ICBMs that could see their manifestation in a mushroom cloud above Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles.”
The senator said that Trump is surrounded by the deep state. “Their overarching objective is to prevent this administration from dismantling the Iran deal completely, because they believe one of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates is going to win. We’ve all seen the debate stages Tweedledum and Tweedle-dumber, and every one of them would eagerly reinstate the Iran deal.
“If you look at the debates,” he continued, “very little of what they’ve talked about is foreign policy [but] it has been almost universally, anti-Israel and weakening our military.” He called Trump to “finish the job” and end the waivers, so “there will be no deal to reinstate.
“Indeed, what we should do is exercise the snapback sanctions that the US has a unilateral right to do to impose United Nations sanctions on Iran. Mr. President, the deep state doesn’t want you to do that, and they are arguing to you with everything they can, you just got to issue a waiver. These are the same people that told you that you couldn’t pull out of the deal to begin with. These are, by the way, the same people that told you we couldn’t move the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. They are urging weakness and appeasement. And if the Trump administration takes their advice, they will have undone the single biggest national security victory President Trump has had [in] his entire tenure in office. I hope and pray that doesn’t happen.”
Cruz spoke about the recovered archive of the Iranian nuclear program and said that the Mossad operation to secure those documents was “incredible.”
“This thing is a James Bond novel in terms of the Mossad’s mission to discover this where we’ve learned – to the surprise of nobody – that everything Iran had been saying was a lie, and that they had been actively working to develop nuclear weapons and ICBMs.”


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