Well, this explains the Obama administration’s indifference to the plight of four Americans that perished in the attack on the Benghazi consulate Sept. 11, 2012. On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz said that the administration has abandoned American victims of terrorist attacks to favor a mushy diplomacy toward Palestinians and Iran. Cruz’s comments came as he was chairing the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts in a hearing exploring the issue.

“Although the United States is not at war with Iran, there’s no question that Iran has been and still is at war with the United States,” Cruz said in his opening remarks. “Yet, despite the slaughter and maiming of an untold number of American citizens at the hands of Palestinian and Iranian terrorists, the United States Government has, rather shockingly, failed time and time again to fulfill its sovereign duty: To obtain justice for its citizens.”

It has done this by failing to use the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism to prosecute terrorists, according to Cruz. And when the families of terrorism victims have taken Iran or the Palestinian Authority to court, the Obama administration has intervened, saying no money should be paid out, no justice served, because it would adversely affect its diplomacy. In Cruz’s view, Obama’s worst infraction is the deal he hashed out with Iran that gave the terrorist nation billions in sanctions relief yet did nothing for its victims. (Nor, for that matter, did the Obama administration’s crack negotiators lift a finger to free Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, nor Marine veteran Amir Hekmati, nor Christian Pastor and Islamic convert Saeed Abedini, nor former FBI agent Robert Levinson — all of whom are being held in Iran.)

But by all means, let’s give the Iranians everything they want anyway. Because, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explained to an audience of Iranian students Tuesday, “Obviously by ‘Death to America,’ we don’t mean death to the American people. The American nation is just like the rest of the nations. It … means death to U.S. policies and its arrogance.” Speaking of arrogance, in a seeming response to Cruz’s charge, Iran demanded reparations from America for the 250,000 Iranians that died, in its estimation, at the hands of America and her proxies. Seems like that diplomacy thing is working out real well.