WASHINGTON DC – US Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a strong advocate of arming the Kurds in the war against Islamic State (ISIS), has confirmed he is running for the US presidency in next year’s elections.
Cruz, 44, from Texas announced his entry into the race via twitter after midnight on Monday morning, saying, “I’m running for President and I hope to earn your support,”
Cruz has been a vocal critic of President Barack Obama’s current strategy against ISIS, saying that the US should boost the military capacity of the Kurdish Peshmerga directly.
“We have a tremendous asset on the ground right now which is the Kurds,” Senator Cruz told CNN last month. “The Peshmerga have been strong allies of the US, they are effective fighters and they desperately need weaponry and assistance.”
He echoed complaints by Kurdish leaders that the US military aid for the Peshmerga should not go through Baghdad.
“For whatever reason the Obama administration has been number one, delaying aiding the Peshmerga, has been running it all through Baghdad instead of aiding them directly, has been blocking them from selling oil, which doesn’t make sense either,” Senator Cruz told CNN.
Cruz, who is the first among other Republican hopefuls to make his candidacy public, said that Washington should focus more on working with the Peshmerga to defeat ISIS than on Syrian rebels.
“At the same time the Obama administration keeps focusing on Syrian rebels, many of whom have far more closer ties with radical Islamic terrorists to make any sense for us to be supporting them,” he said. “The Kurds are allies and they are boots on the ground and when we work with them in concert they are ready to fight on the frontline along with serious air power.”
“That is what we ought to be doing,” he told CNN. “If it were a military objective to take ISIS out, I think that is what we would be doing.”
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