Sen. Ted Cruz

We're not trying to conquer the land and make it an American territory.

We're not an expansive regime.

We're acting to stop people from killing Americans.

That's a very different thing.

And so the justification of the Ayatollah you suggested, well, I want to get the tools to kill a lot more Americans so I can keep killing the Americans I can now.

That doesn't pass the smell test.

Look, I think that is silliness.

And I actually think Israel had very little to do with why the United States is engaged in this military conflict.

President Trump is acting to keep America safer.

I can tell you when I talked with him about it,

Israel didn't even come up.

We talked about the Iranians killing Americans.

Like in my conversations with him, Israel was not even part of the conversation.

It was simply this regime has been tried to murder Trump twice, hired hit men to murder Trump twice.

He was not happy about that.

He doesn't understandably.

Sure.

And this was all about keeping Americans safe.

That was his reasoning.

I can't tell you why he said that.