Link: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/03/03/ted_cruz_reacts_to_netanyahu_s_speech_calls_a_possible_iran_deal_reminiscent.html

Ted Cruz Compares Obama to Neville Chamberlain and Iran to Nazi Germany

By Betsy Woodruff

Ted Cruz says a deal with Iran will lead to a nuclear Iran.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

After Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz held court for a glut of reporters in Statuary Hall, and his response to the Israeli prime minister’s message was unequivocal: The current situation with Iran, Cruz said, is just like the run-up to World War II. Betsy Woodruff

Betsy Woodruff is a Slate staff writer.

“The deal being negotiated today is reminiscent of Munich in 1938,” the slow-talking Texan said, referring to the Munich Agreement that let Nazi Germany annex part of Czechoslovakia. “And when the administration comes back to America and promises peace in our time, we shouldn’t believe them now any more than we should have believed them then.”

Comparing the Obama administration to Neville Chamberlain, the British leader whose historic legacy is that he tried and failed to appease Hitler, is quite a strong statement. When a reporter asked Cruz if today was really comparable to the rise of the Third Reich, Cruz said, “Yes.”

“There is one threat, and one threat only, on the face of the globe with the potential to once again annihilate 6 million Jews,” Cruz continued. “A nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to the nation of Israel, that’s what Prime Minister Netanyahu has told us.”

Cruz went to even greater lengths to be crystal-clear.

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“It is worth underscoring that the word existential does not mean a Frenchman in a black beret chain-smoking,” he said. “It means going to the very existence of the nation of Israel.”

I asked Cruz if he thought Israel would likely be destroyed if the president’s deal with Iran got finalized.

“If this deal is implemented, it will lead, ineluctably, to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said.

“What the Obama administration doesn’t understand is these are radical Islamic zealots who have pledged global jihad and have openly stated their desire to murder as many Jews and as many Americans as possible,” Cruz continued. “And if history teaches one lesson, it is that if somebody tells you they want to kill you, believe them.”