Tuesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” anchor Pamela Brown repeatedly asked Rep.-elect Adam Hamawy (D-NJ) if Iran is an adversary to the United States.
Brown asked, “Do you see Iran as the adversary and Israel as an ally to the US?”
Hamawy said, “Well, now what I see is that we were pushed into this war by Israel. It’s not helping Americans. Americans didn’t ask for it. It’s illegal. It’s immoral. And at this point, I think the United States and the Iranians want this war to end.”
Brown asked again, “Do you see Iran as the adversary?”
Hamawy said, “I see we pushed them into a fight, and so I think we both have to step back and say, is this helping either one of us?”
Brown pressed, “But are they the adversary?”
Hamawy replied, “We’re making adversaries when we should be making friends.”
Brown said, “They’ve been saying ‘death to America’ for decades.”
Hamawy said, “We’ve been saying that to Iran for decades as well, and so what we need to do is use diplomacy.”
Brown added, “They’ve killed a lot of Americans.”
Hamawy said, “And we’ve killed a lot of them as well.”
Brown asked, “So you, so you don’t see Iran as an adversary?”
Hamawy said, “I see that we are pushing Iran into a fight when we have the leverage to kind of bring them to the table. And we did that during the Obama administration, and we could do that again if we use diplomacy, our leverage, our both economic, not just military power, to create friends in the region, to pressure them as well, and to bring peace to the region if we want to.”
Brown asked, “So do you see Israel as the adversary, then?”
Hamawy said, “I see, you know, I want America to succeed, and so I want America to be at peace. I want America to have as many friends and allies around the world as possible. And we do that by, again, exerting our diplomatic and economic power to the benefit of people, to make more friends rather than make more enemies. And I see that we are moving in the wrong direction. I think America today is less safe, you know, since we started the war. We are, you know, more, we’ve created more enemies, we lost allies because of this. And that doesn’t make, doesn’t help anyone, including, I’m not even like talking about the economic impacts that we’ve had.”
Brown said, “So basically, bottom line, you don’t want to say whether Israel is an adversary or ally, and same with Iran?”
Hamawy said, “I’m saying that that doesn’t help us. We’re in the middle of a war right now that is making American lives worse. We’re putting our troops at risk. We’re creating, you know, an economic crisis that we don’t need. And so the blame game doesn’t help. So how do we get out of this?”
Brown said, “Yeah, but as a member, you know, you’re going to be a representative, right, member of Congress. I think people want to understand your views and have clarity of how you view various countries, and whether you view the country that we’re currently at war with, whether or not you agree with the war, as an adversary, and whether you think it’s a worthy objective to make sure that they don’t have nuclear weapons that could be used against our allies.”
Hamawy said, “I think that is a worthy objective. There’s different ways we could do that. We could do it by going into war, putting our troops at risk, and creating an economic crisis, or we could do it diplomatically like the Obama administration did. You know, I don’t agree with the Iranian government. I think it’s an authoritarian government. It’s a dictatorship. It is not good for its people. But going to war this way, it’s made it actually worse. It has made it more radical, and it has created a crisis here at home that we didn’t need.”
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