Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said Israel and Iran pose equal threats to the United States. Both the U.S. ally and the Islamic regime "have proven dangerous in their own way," El-Sayed said.
The remarks came during a Thursday night debate against El-Sayed's Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers. After the moderator pressed El-Sayed to answer a question he had sidestepped before the debate—whether he agreed with a supporter who had argued that Israel is a greater threat to the United States than Iran—El-Sayed first declined to do so, calling it "a ridiculous hypothetical." Asked the same question again, El-Sayed said he believes Israel and Iran, the latter of which has killed and kidnapped more than 1,000 Americans since 1979, pose equal but different threats to America.
"I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way," he said. "One at risk of attacking us. One getting us into wars we have no business fighting."
The answer marks the latest example of El-Sayed, who has struggled with historically Democratic Jewish voters in Michigan, downplaying Islamic terrorism.
Earlier this year, when a Lebanese American man drove a car packed with explosives into the Temple Israel synagogue in Michigan after his brother, a commander in the Iranian-backed terror outfit Hezbollah, died in an Israeli airstrike, El-Sayed said "it's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people." He also told staffers on a private campaign strategy call in March that he wanted to avoid making a public statement about the death of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The Iranian regime is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism and has launched violent attacks on Americans since its inception in 1979, when it took 66 Americans hostage for 444 days. Since then, Iran and its terror proxies have carried out attacks around the world, including the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. military service members.
During the Iraq War, more than 600 American soldiers were killed by Iranian-backed militias. The regime has continued to fund suicide bombings and other attacks on U.S. service members and has repeatedly attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump.
During Thursday night's debate, Rogers took aim at El-Sayed for taking campaign contributions from donors linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a political Islamist group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of Treasury. El-Sayed's father-in-law, who is one of the top donors to the Democrat's super PAC, is also among the leaders of an Islamic organization identified by the federal government as a public facing group for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Free Beacon reported.
"He has taken money from groups associated [with] the Muslim Brotherhood. He has taken money from individuals on his campaign who openly support Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda," said Rogers.
Rogers also slammed El-Sayed for owning a luxury property in Dubai and for giving conflicting statements about whether he has dual citizenship in Egypt. El-Sayed claimed to be an Egyptian citizen in a 2016 speech and on his 2014 professional résumé, the Free Beacon reported. He now denies that he ever held Egyptian citizenship.
"How does a guy who's had less than four years of work experience, who, by the way, on the campaign trail said he had 10, own a luxury property in the United Arab Emirates?" said Rogers. "He's worth a million bucks. Somebody has to tell me how this math works."
"He lied now about being an Egyptian citizen, or not being an Egyptian citizen, I can't figure out what he is today," Rogers continued. "That's a conman."
