Sen. Ted Cruz

North Korea claims they have missiles that can go.

In fact, Austin, Texas, has been one of the targets they have identified as a nuclear target.

Now, look, Kim Jong-un is narcissistic and unstable and a megalomaniac.

But perhaps.

some modicum of deterrence is possible.

Because the one thing Kim Jong-un understands is if he were, God forbid, to use a nuclear weapon, his regime would end that day.

The response would be devastating, and he wants to stay in power.

It would have been a much better world if he didn't have nuclear weapons, but there's at least some modicum one can hope of deterrence.

What is qualitatively different when religion comes into it, when a theocratic zealot comes into it,

is that ordinary cost-benefit analysis doesn't work nearly as well.

So, look, if the Ayatollah had a nuclear weapon, I think there is some real chance, and I don't know what the possibility is, but it's real, that he would detonate that weapon in Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles.

Now, if he did that...

the result would be an overwhelming military response and a response that predictably would take the lives of many Iranians if he detonated a nuclear weapon.

Here's the problem.

I think the Ayatollah might have been just fine with that.

If he got to kill lots of Jews or he got to kill lots of Americans, I think with religious zealotry, that might be an acceptable trade-off to him.

And so my view was that

As a matter of national security, we should do everything necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

And I will say, one of the additional justifications the administration has used for this military conflict is that Iran was rapidly building up its short and medium-term missile stockpile, building over 100 missiles a month, and they were building them up and building them up.

And the administration was concerned that they would get such an overwhelming stockpile of missiles