What El-Sayed Wouldn’t Say

By Abe Greenwald

It’s when people strain their mightiest to hide what’s in their hearts that they reveal their true selves. Their efforts to conceal who they really are become so tortured and conspicuous that they give themselves away.

Abdul El-Sayed gave himself away yesterday at a town hall in Michigan. A University of Michigan student of Persian heritage named Imam Dashti took the mic, described the Iranian regime’s persecution of his own family, and pleaded with El-Sayed to show a little compassion for the suffering people of Iran.  

“My cousin was hunted in the streets of Iran by the IRGC because her hijab wasn’t on right,” Dashti began. “My uncle was sentenced to die, received 50 lashings by Ali Khamenei’s government, and the terror that we’ve experienced is insurmountable.” He went on in an impassioned, even anguished tone, “And you can imagine our surprise as Persians, our sadness when we heard you, Abdul—a leaked audio tape of you saying you didn’t want to comment on Supreme Leader Khamenei’s death and that people in Dearborn were sad when he died. And I just have a simple question, Abdul. That silence had [left] a gaping hole in our community, and I want to ask if you regret that silence. I want to ask if you renounce the people that held vigils, that supported this terrorist for all the stuff that he’s done. I wanted to ask if you stand unequivocally against the IRGC, against the Islamic Republic of Iran that has killed 50,000 protesters, Abdul. I haven’t heard anything from you about the protesters, Abdul. Please!”

The answer was no. El-Sayed would not renounce the Iranian regime or its supporters. 

But you can’t come out and say that in plain English when you’re running for U.S. Senate, so he looked the desperate kid straight in the face and launched into an irrelevant and supremely abstract word salad worthy of Kamala Harris. 

I’m going to do you a favor and summarize. He said, “What we all need is more democracy, more freedom in the world but also an understanding of what we can and should do with respect to that.” He went on, “One can disagree with the governance of a foreign country. One can stand in solidarity with freedom and democracy movements.” But “when one decides that we are going to go in and take out the leadership of a foreign government…. A lot of times that frustration gets used to justify corporate interests that have a real stake in the natural resources in a particular country. See what I mean?”

Yes, I see what you mean. You’ll talk about the perils of regime change, evil corporations, and stealing natural resources, as if the kid had asked you to enlist and go fight. But all he asked you was to verbally renounce the Iranian regime. And not only will you not renounce it—you won’t even name it. 

Dashti saw it, too, and didn’t let him off the hook. “You still haven’t said it,” he said, and he asked once more whether El-Sayed would stand with him against the regime. And once more, El-Sayed spoke about his support for freedom movements in general. 

El-Sayed went so far as to put words in the poor kid’s mouth. “What I think you want to hear from me is to say, ah, well, the U.S. has a responsibility to be involved in regime change.” Dashti shook his head, said, “No,” and asked one last time, “Do you stand with our movement for freedom and democracy? Ours? The Persians?” El-Sayed sidestepped the specific question and said he wants freedom for the people of Iran.

Which you may think means something. But you know who else has said that? Every supreme leader to rule Iran since the 1979 revolution. The catch is, as Ruhollah Khomeini said in 1982, “Our freedom is within the limits of the laws of Islam.” One man’s freedom, you see, is another’s prison, which is why El-Sayed felt safe using that general formulation. 

OK, what’s so hard about renouncing the Iranian regime while making it clear that you oppose the war? Even Zohran Mamdani managed as much when the war began. “The Iranian government has engaged in systematic repression of its own people, even killing thousands of Iranians who were seeking to express the most basic forms of dissent earlier this year,” he said at a press conference. “It is a brutal government, and I’ve also said that, while I may be a young mayor, I am old enough to remember the devastating consequences of our country pursuing a war with the intent of regime change in that very same region not that many years ago.” Done.

This should have been a no-brainer for El-Sayed. The man has zero problem speaking in grotesque contradictions. When a terrorist attempted to blow up Temple Israel synagogue and day school in West Bloomfield, Michigan, El-Sayed managed both to condemn and justify the attack in a single statement.

So why couldn’t he follow Mamdani’s lead here? Because, at the end of the day, Mamdani is a socialist and not an Islamist, whereas El-Sayed is an Islamist and not a socialist. And Islamists don’t care about Muslims. They care about advancing Islamism, which happens to be the Iranian regime’s chief aim. 

El-Sayed was never afraid of offending regime supporters in Michigan (bad as that would be). He is a regime supporter in Michigan. And yesterday, he tried so hard to hide it that he ripped right through his disguise.
  

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.