As Ted Cruz calls for a regime change in Iran, other Texas Republicans are more cautious

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WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is pushing for military strikes and a possible regime change in Iran, a hardline stance few in the Texas delegation have yet to embrace.

Texas’ junior senator this week suggested the U.S. take a larger role in the conflict between Israel and Iran, something President Donald Trump is considering.

Trump has, during the last decade, pushed Republicans toward an isolationist agenda, compared to the hawkish days of former President George W. Bush, who sent troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump has yet to announce a decision on military intervention. More specifically, he is debating, according to multiple news reports, whether to provide Israel with a “bunker buster” bomb to destroy a nuclear enrichment site embedded within an Iranian mountainside.

“I may do it, I may not do it,” he told reporters outside the White House Wednesday.

Cruz said on his podcast that an American attack on Fordow “makes a lot of sense.”

“There is a reasonable possibility that the president will choose to authorize a targeted bombing strike on the Fordow nuclear weapons research facility,” he told reporters later at the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon. Cruz also said he has shared his opinions with Trump directly.

Cruz also discussed the situation at length with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.

The combative interview between Carlson, an isolationist who does not support intervention, and Cruz, a self-described “noninterventionist hawk,” has become a flashpoint inside Trump’s MAGA movement.

While Cruz said he does not currently support putting American troops on the ground, “If the risk got severe enough, I would support that.”

U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Waco, who is supportive of a military strike, told the Tribune that in conversations with members of Congress, he has found the “vast majority” of them are supportive of military action.

“I do admit that there are those that do not support it,” he said in a Wednesday interview.

The widest gap between Cruz and other Republicans is whether to seek a regime change.

Such a change, Cruz argued on Monday, would “enhance American security massively” given the animosity Iran has for the United States.

“I am advocating that we use maximum pressure and economic sanctions to pressure the regime in a way that might encourage this regime to fall,” he said.

Texas’ senior senator, John Cornyn, was more measured on the issue.

“I think that's up to the Iranian people,” he told the Tribune when asked about a regime change. “Hopefully, they will take the opportunity that this may provide.”

Cornyn appeared to be in support of limited military intervention, characterizing the use of larger U.S. munitions as “a continuation of the current policy” toward Israel. On Fox News a few hours later, though, Cornyn stressed that the United States does not need “to take the lead in this effort.”

“Israel has a variety of options, and they seem to be doing a very effective job on their own with our support,” he said.

When pressed on whether Israel would be able to destroy the Fordow facility without American support, Cornyn said, “I think they have multiple options,” including the deployment of Israeli ground troops.

Other Texas Republicans have yet to take an explicit position on military strikes but say they stand with both Trump and Israel.

“We need to be ready to trust and support the President’s decision,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Houston Republican and former Navy SEAL, said on Tuesday.

“I stand with President Trump as we will continue to support our friend and ally, Israel, as it rightfully takes action to defend itself,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, said last week.

Roy expressed support Tuesday for “strategic limited support” for “Israel’s targeting & denial of Iranian nukes” but is in clear opposition of sending in “ground troops, regime change, soccer fields, supplemental funding.”

Sessions, who was first elected to the House in 1996, has been a player in national politics through several U.S. military operations in the Middle East. But he’s not fearing a wide war if America intervenes to strike the nuclear facility. He praised Israel’s response, but without American military power, he said, the country “cannot necessarily finish the fight.”

Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, appeared ripe for military confrontation.

Responding to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s declaration “the battle begins,” hours after Trump declared him an “easy target,” Jackson said “BRING IT.”

Three Texas Democrats, along with a bipartisan group in the Capitol’s lower chamber, are urging the president to resist joining the fray without congressional approval. Reps. Greg Casar, Lloyd Doggett and Veronica Escobar have signed onto a resolution that would ask Trump to seek congressional approval if he decides to commit U.S. armed forces to Iran.

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