Texas Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzMurkowski: Supreme Court nominee should not be taken up before election Battle lines drawn on precedent in Supreme Court fight Sunday shows - Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death dominates MORE on Thursday hit fellow Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, doubling down on his criticism of the nuclear deal with Iran.

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Cruz maintained Thursday that if world powers lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for the country curbing its nuclear program, members of the Obama administration "will be the leading global financiers" of terrorism.

"When you send billions of dollars to jihadists trying to kill Americans, you bear responsibility for the murder they carry out with the money you have given them," Cruz said on the "Chad Hasty Show."

"You know, one of the reasons Republicans keep getting clobbered is we have leaders like Mitt Romney and like Jeb Bush, who are afraid to say that," Cruz said.

The Texas senator, who is expected to be in next week's first GOP-sanctioned debate, further criticized the Republicans, slamming Romney's debate performance during his 2012 presidential campaign.

"Part of the reason Mitt Romney got clobbered by Barack Obama is because we all remember that third debate where Barack Obama turned to Mitt and said, 'I said the Benghazi attack was terrorism and no one is more upset by Benghazi than I am,' " Cruz said on Hasty's show. "And Mitt, I guess listening to his own advice, said, 'Well, gosh, I don't want to use any rhetoric, so OK, never mind, I'll just kind of rearrange the pencil on the podium here,' '' Cruz said.

Cruz was hitting back after Romney chastised him earlier in the day in a tweet that said Cruz was "way over the line" charging Obama with supporting terrorism by inking the Iran deal.

Cruz also took issue with Bush, saying it was "just wrong" for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another GOP presidential candidate, to say that Obama was marching Israelis to the "door of the oven" with the nuclear deal.

"Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu said a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to Israel. And I'm sorry, Jeb Bush is wrong. We shouldn't shy away from saying that," Cruz said on the program.