Republican U.S. Representative Ed Royce announced on Monday he will not run for a 14th term in his southern California district.
Royce, who serves as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was first elected in 1992 and has been easily re-elected since.
In a statement quoted by Reuters, Royce said he wanted to focus his last year leading the foreign affairs panel “on the urgent threats facing our nation,” which he listed as the governments in North Korea and Iran, Russian efforts to “weaponize information to fracture western democracies” and terrorist threats in Africa and Central Asia.
Royce becomes the latest in a wave of some 30 House Republicans who have announced they are retiring, running for another office or resigning.
Royce is considered to be a pro-Israel lawmaker. In 2015, he was among a group of Representatives who introduced a resolution decrying the EU decision to label Jewish products from Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan heights.
That year, the House Foreign Affairs Committee which he chairs passed a bipartisan resolution condemning anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement within the Palestinian Authority.
Royce was also one of the vocal critics of the nuclear deal that was signed with Iran in 2015 under the Obama administration.
Shortly after the deal was reached in the summer of 2015, Royce blasted the agreement as "deeply flawed" and said the agreement would make the world "less safe."
At the time, he also introduced legislation that would have prevented the implementation of the deal.
This past October, just before President Donald Trump refused to recertify the Iran deal, Royce opined that, despite is flaws, the U.S. should “enforce the hell” out of the Iran nuclear rather than pull out.