12 August 2015
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) encouraged states to take action against the Iranian deal themselves during his first Alabama campaign stop August 9, which was hosted by the Shelby County Republican Party at the Pelham Civic Complex in Pelham, a suburb of Birmingham.
In the overflow crowd estimated at nearly 900 people, a Birmingham businessman with a dental equipment manufacturing company posed a question regarding the Iran nuclear deal. “Is there any reason the states, where that $150 billion resides, cannot issue sanctions on their own against Iran and seize those funds, and in fact add more sanctions to that process?”
“It is a fantastic question,” replied Cruz, who has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court and if elected would be the only president to have clerked for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. “I think it is something the states should enact and lead, to do exactly that.”
 “I think states ought to go down that road,” said Cruz. “It will be a fight. It’s not an open and shut legal argument, but we ought to do everything we can to resist this catastrophic Iranian deal.”
The Iranian deal, which is undergoing Congressional review but promised by Obama’s veto power to be in effect, is what convinced Cruz that the Obama administration is inevitably the “leading financier of terrorism.” Cruz’s energetic candor strikes some of his colleagues as over-the-top, but citizen audiences gravitate towards it, including the youth.