Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has for months been raising the alarm about the growing threat of antisemitism on the American right. During a visit to Los Angeles for the Milken Institute Global Conference, he called for elected officials — including in his own party — to take a clear stand on the issue. 

“I don’t want to wake up in five years and find ourselves in a country where both major political parties are unequivocally anti-Israel and unapologetically antisemitic. And I think that is a very real threat,” Cruz told Jewish Insider in an interview on Monday at the Milken conference. 

Among populist young conservatives, where the MAGA ideology of President Donald Trump has given way to an isolationist, America First worldview, Cruz sees a big shift on Israel. 

“Every elected official is going to have to decide where he or she stands, and what you believe,” said Cruz. “As Ronald Reagan said more than 50 years ago, this is a time for choosing, and each person can decide where he or she stands.”

When pressed about Vice President JD Vance — who, through his choice of staffers and comments suggesting skepticism of interventionist policies, is increasingly seen as sympathetic to younger conservatives’ worldviews — Cruz did not come to the vice president’s defense. 

“You got my answer,” Cruz told JI.

The Texas Republican was at Milken to speak on a panel about economic mobility. But Cruz was also eager to talk about what he saw as exciting developments in the war with Iran. He called for what he described as “regime collapse” in Iran: the U.S. working to free Iran from authoritarian religious leaders without necessarily sticking around to replace them with a new leader. 

He called for a more muscular U.S. approach to Iran; he wants to see the U.S. arming the Iranians, the Kurds and the Peshmerga — whatever it takes to bring down the Islamic Republic. 

“Removing that regime from power is unambiguously in America’s national security interest. Now, that does not mean we should engage in nation-building, and I have no delusions that we’re going to go transform Iran into some democratic utopia [or] we’re going to turn Iran into Switzerland. That’s not our job,” said Cruz. “For 25 years, Republican foreign policy has operated under what [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell described as the Pottery Barn rule: ‘You break it, you buy it.’ I think that’s nonsense.”