Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed refused three separate times during a Monday-released ABC News interview to give a straight answer on whether he condemns Iran’s current regime.
Host Linsey Davis asked El-Sayed directly: “[F]or those who do want to hear, do you condemn the current Iranian regime? What do you say?”
El-Sayed did not say yes or no. Instead he said, “They’ve engaged in horrific acts. There’s no question about that. I am for democracy. I’m for human rights.” He then pivoted to the Obama-era nuclear deal, the JCPOA, and to criticizing President Trump’s handling of Iran policy.
“So, yes, are we in active war against Iran? Yes. Are they an enemy combatant in this war? Yes,” El-Sayed said. “Should we be here, is that actually where we want our public policy to go?”
Davis pressed him again, telling him to answer “yes or no.”
El-Sayed still would not. “I condemn a lot of their action,” he said. “But if you want a pathway to peace with folks, you’re going to have to figure out how to get to a position of peace.”
He went on to call the question itself the wrong one to ask.
“I just think this idea of like, condemn or not condemn, right? Is kind of an odd approach. I condemned the genocide that Israel has done. I condemned the apartheid, too. I condemned the attack on democracy that Iran has done. But we engage with actors in a world where you kind of have to figure out how to make peace with people you disagree with.”
El-Sayed also drew comparisons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, saying he would like the U.S. to “stop subsidizing genocide and apartheid in other places” and “stop, maybe, making deals with countries like Saudi Arabia… or the UAE, who are doing genocide in Sudan.”
He closed by arguing the real debate should be about American values rather than a condemnation checklist. “Can we actually, objectively ask what our values are? We want to promote democracy all over the world,” he said.
El-Sayed is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Michigan as a Democrat.
