Ted Cruz rips PoliFact website for labeling his Iran deal statement ‘false’

Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz used his pen Tuesday to rip PolitiFact on its coverage of the Iranian deal.

The Texas senator blasted the political fact-checking website, which ran the Tampa Bay Times, for concluding his statement that the Obama administration’s Iranian deal will “facilitate and accelerate the nation of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons” is patently “false.”

“As I wrote in my new book ’A Time for Truth,’ ’PolitiFact’ represents a new species of yellow journalism, where liberal reporters dress up as ’facts’ their liberal opinions and accuse anyone who disagrees with them of ’lying,’” Mr. Cruz wrote in an article for the National Review published Tuesday.

Mr. Cruz criticized the website for taking the Iranian regime’s word that it will not develop nuclear weapons because of its assumption that “the mullahs are entirely truthful and honest” or “we will somehow magically know if they are cheating or breaking the deal.”

“It doesn’t take a logician to see where the syllogism breaks down,” he wrote. “It is a subjective judgment call which, when considered in the context of Tehran’s track record, is laughingly, obviously false.”

Mr. Cruz then cited current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani boasting in 2013 of his participation in violating the 2003 Tehran Declaration, in which Iran was supposed to suspend its nuclear programs, and recent statements made from Iranian commander Mohammad Reza Naghdi and a tweet from the Supreme Leader speaking of the destruction of Israel.

Last week, Mr. Cruz along with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, staged a rally on Capitol Hill protesting the Iranian deal. At the protest, sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots and pro-Israel activists, Mr. Cruz warned, “If this deal goes through, we know to an absolute certainty people will die. Americans will die, Israelis will die, Europeans will die.”