Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, is facing new scrutiny over a series of old social media posts in which he attributed instability in Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan to American foreign policy and sanctions.
The posts, archived via web.archive.org and reported by Breitbart News, span from January 2020 through August 2021. In one, dated January 3, 2020, El-Sayed wrote that “[o]ur country’s imperialism” helped create the conditions that produced Iran’s regime, contributed to the “circumstances” in Iraq, led to the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal, and emboldened Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen.
In another post, dated March 24, 2020, El-Sayed said U.S. sanctions on Iran had contributed to that country’s COVID-19 outbreak.
On August 15, 2021 — days before a suicide bombing at Kabul’s Abbey Gate killed 13 American service members during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — El-Sayed wrote that people should be “concerned with what’s happening in #Kabul today,” but placed the blame on what he called “the fateful choice 20 yrs ago to wage endless, aimless war in pursuit of an undefined mission under G. W. Bush.”
Breitbart News noted the posts echo past comments from El-Sayed campaign surrogate Hasan Piker, who has said the United States was “pound for pound” worse than al-Qaeda.
A Tight Race
The resurfaced posts land in the middle of a closely fought Senate contest. El-Sayed is running against Republican Mike Rogers in a state Republicans have not carried in a Senate race since 1994. A recent Fox News poll showed the race nearly even, with El-Sayed at 50 percent and Rogers at 49 percent.
Rogers’ campaign has separately highlighted what it describes as El-Sayed’s ties to organizations linked to terrorism, including individuals who have donated to his campaign, as Breitbart News has previously reported.
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