Michigan candidate El-Sayed refuses to condemn Iran regime in town hall meeting

Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, on Wednesday skirted a request to unequivocally condemn the Iranian government and its military. During a town hall meeting at the University of Michigan, a student who identified himself as Persian and wore a cross told El-Sayed that the Iranian regime beat a family relative and sentenced him to death. The student, Iman Dashti, also said that the Iranian military hunted his cousin because they said she didn’t wear her Islamic head covering correctly. He asked if El-Sayed condemned the regime and if he regretted what Dashti characterized as his previous silence on the topic.

El-Sayed insisted he would always stand with democratic movements, but he did not believe the United States should have tried to topple the Iranian government. Too often, the United States acted as the world’s policeman and interfered in countries as a ploy to gain control over their natural resources, he said. The Iranian people should decide how to create democratic change in their country, he said. Sanctions against Iran hurt the common people more than their government, he said.

The crowd of attendees applauded El-Sayed when he spoke about his opposition to the war with Iran. The student urged El-Sayed twice to explicitly condemn the Iranian regime, but El-Sayed repeated the same answer as before.

El-Sayed’s Republican challenger, Mike Rogers, shared a clip of the speech online with a comment slamming his opponent. El-Sayed refused to condemn a terrorist dictator murdering thousands of his own people, Rogers said. Rogers has also called for an end to the war in Iran.

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