Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, condemned Obama and Biden administration officials for pressuring Israel to accept a ceasefire with the Hezbollah terrorists by threatening to withhold needed weapons.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah accepted an agreement for a ceasefire across the Israel-Lebanon border. The deal was brokered by the U.S. and France.
The Associated Press reported that a key part of the agreement is enforcing a 2006 U.N. resolution, which was supposed to complete Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon and ensure Hezbollah would move north of the Litani River, keeping the area exclusively under the Lebanese military and U.N. peacekeepers.
Cruz, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement Wednesday criticizing how the U.S. has treated Israel.
"I am deeply disturbed both by reports that Obama-Biden officials exerted enormous pressure on our Israeli allies to accept this ceasefire and by how those officials are characterizing Israel's obligations," Cruz said in his statement. "This pressure and these statements are further efforts to undermine Israel and constrain the incoming Trump administration.
"Obama-Biden officials pressured our Israeli allies into accepting the ceasefire by withholding weapons they needed to defend themselves and counter Hezbollah, and by threatening to facilitate a further, broader, binding international arms embargo through the United Nations."
Cruz added that Obama and Biden administration officials "are already trying to use Israel's acceptance of this ceasefire to ensure that Hezbollah and other Iranian terrorist groups remain intact across Lebanon, and to limit Israel's future freedom of action and self-defense."
"Administration officials, including Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken, today even downplayed Israel's right under the ceasefire to strike terrorist groups in Lebanon when those groups pose imminent threats," the senator added.
According to Cruz, such "constraints have been rejected by our Israeli allies."
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that under the ceasefire Israel retains full freedom of action to counter Hezbollah if the group attacks Israel or tries to rebuild its terrorist infrastructure," Cruz said. "The United States should allow and assist Israel in doing so, and I am committed to working closely with the Trump administration and my colleagues in the incoming Congress to ensure they are able to so."