Sen. Ted Cruz speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition spring leadership meeting at The Venetian Las Vegas on April 25, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) contrasted President Barack Obama’s announcement of plans to open an embassy in Havana, Cuba, with the U.S. refusal to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem.

“How sad is it that under the Obama administration the United States is going to have an embassy in Havana before we have an embassy in Jerusalem, that this administration will be friendlier to a Communist dictator who hates America and seeks to undermine our nation, than it is willing to stand with our close friend and ally, the nation of Israel,” Cruz said Wednesday, the day Obama announced the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana.

Cruz was speaking on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, and his remarks were first reported by Breitbart.com. He later tweeted a link to the interview.

Congress repeatedly has backed moving the Israel embassy to Jerusalem, but successive administrations of both parties have rejected the move, saying the status of the city should be resolved only in final status talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Cruz, whose father emigrated from Cuba, fiercely opposes Obama’s policy announced last year of opening up ties with President Raul Castro’s communist regime.

In his chat with Hewitt, Cruz linked Obama’s foreign policies to those of Obama’s first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nod.

Cruz said the opening of ties with Cuba is “an example — consistently under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, we have abandoned our friends and allies, whether it is the U.K., whether it’s Canada, whether it’s Israel, and we have shown weakness and appeasement to our enemies.”

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