Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reacted Thursday evening to the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq by pointing out that military leader had been involved in ethnic cleansing in Syria and terror elsewhere.

In a statement, Cruz said:

The end of Qasem Soleimani is welcome and long-overdue justice for the thousands of Americans killed or wounded by his Iranian-controlled forces across the Middle East, and for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqi Sunnis ethnically cleansed by his militias. It is also long-overdue justice for our Israeli allies who have suffered decades of terrorism at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists commanded by his IRGC Quds Force. The message to all those who mean harm to America is loud and clear.

Cruz has been warning about Soleimani for years. In 2015, as the Washington Post reported, Cruz objected to President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran because, among other flaws, it released Soleymani from international sanctions within eight years.

Cruz also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Soleimani “has more blood of American service members on his hands than any living terrorist.”

Estimates of the number of American soldiers killed by terrorists and militias working at Soleimani’s direction hover around the 500 mark.

While Republicans welcomed the operation that killed Soleimani, Democrats complained that it could lead to an escalation in the region and that it was undertaken without explicit congressional authorization beforehand.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.