Washington, D.C.– A group of internationally-recognized scholars, national security practitioners, and high-ranking government officials convened on Wednesday at the Defeat Jihad Summit to discuss “The Record to date in Defeating the Global Jihad Movement.”

Among the discussants was Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who urged that America must employ a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Global Jihad Movement and prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon in order to preserve the freedom of the United States.

“This is an important gathering,” stressed Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). “This is a comprehensive, serious strategy in addressing the threat of radical Islamism,” the Senator said in complementing the Center For Security Policy’s Secure Freedom Strategy.

“If you’re not aware of what you’re fighting, you’re not going to defeat it,” said Cruz.

What brings together jihadists groups, such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram, is the ideology of “radical Islam,” explained Cruz.

Cruz added that if Christians and Jews tortured and killed people in the name of their religion, he and the surrounding panel would be the first to condemn the attacks as a perversion of their faith.

“It is the radical islamist theology and political philosophy of jihad” that our enemies preach, and “It is dangerous not to acknowledge it,” explained the Senator from Texas.

Cruz commended Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s January speech in which he called for reformation in Islam. “He knew well that he was risking his life to say that” in front of the Muslim world’s clerics, he explained.

Cruz said that while he was at the Munich Security Conference, the President of Kurdistan revealed to him that ISIS was using rape as a political tool to instill fear within minority sects. “ISIS is the face of evil. They are beheading children. They are crucifying Christians. They are beheading journalists,” said Cruz.

Cruz added, “The solution to ISIS is not eradicating poverty in the Middle East, or expanding medicaid in Iraq. The solution to ISIS is to hunt down and kill the terrorist leaders.”

The Senator recommended that the United States directly arm and equip the Kurdish Peshmerga, instead of sending of relying upon Baghdad to facilitate the transfer. America needs to arm the Kurds so they can “hunt down and kill the ISIS leaders,” he said.

Cruz said that the nation also needs to recognize the threat posed by Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, which is the “gravest threat” facing the United States. “We are repeating the mistakes of the 1990s with regard to North Korea… but here the dangers are qualitatively greater,” he said. What makes Iran more dangerous is that their country, which is led by Ayatollah Khamenei and the mullahs, are not rational actors, explained Cruz.

“If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the odds are unacceptably high that they will use that weapon,” he  added. Even If Iran doesn’t use their nuclear weapon, “the inevitable result will be nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East,” he concluded.