Cruz Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: National Review: Ted Cruz Is Right: The Muslim Brotherhood Is a Terrorist Organization

HOUSTON, Texas – This weekend in National Review, Andrew McCarthy praised recently filed legislation by presidential candidate Ted Cruz that designates the Muslim Brotherhood "as what it actually is: a terrorist organization." The full column may be viewed here and excerpts appear below:

This week, finally, Ted Cruz decided enough is enough. The Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful has proposed a bill to force the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as what it actually is: a terrorist organization.

The legislation, Senator Cruz tells me, "is part of a larger effort to expose the various radical elements that are trying, both at home and abroad, to undermine our very way of life."

A parallel focus of this effort is Iranian aggression — manifested again this week with the regime's taking of yet another American hostage. Cruz has been a vigorous critic of the deal, negotiated by President Obama, that will make the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism a threshold nuclear power while materially supporting its terror promotion with over $100 billion in funding. The senator has also joined with colleagues in the House on a bill to apply the terrorist designation to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps — the elite regime force that orchestrated much of the terrorist insurgencies against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, to say nothing of the 1995 bombing that killed 19 American airmen at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

The menace that is Iran is clear to most Americans outside the Obama administration. The Brotherhood, though, is a "complicated case," Cruz acknowledges. They've managed to "convince the Obama administration they are a secular, political entity" that can be America's "moderate partner and assist in outreach to the Muslim world."

The proposed legislation corrects this dangerous misimpression by sketching the Brotherhood's history and the centrality of violent jihad to it. It details, for example, the instruction of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna that "jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored or evaded."

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Cruz could not be more right in describing the Brotherhood as "the key foundation stone for radical Sunni terrorism that has spawned both al-Qaeda and ISIS." In fact, as the bill describes, there is a significant history of Brotherhood underwriting of terrorism. In addition, key al-Qaeda figures have been launched by immersion in Brotherhood ideology.

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To disastrous effect, the Obama administration has indulged the fantasy that American interests are served by making common cause with virulently anti-American Islamists who want Israel wiped from the map. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, has been an enthusiastic partner in the project to cultivate the Brotherhood. And too many Republicans have fallen prey to the illusion of a Middle East tamed by "sharia democracy" — an illusion that portrays enemies as friends and is continually surprised by the rising tide of jihadism.

Ted Cruz understands the threat and is distinguishing himself by charting a very different policy direction. It will serve him well. And it would serve the country well.