Adam Hamawy, the Democrat who won New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District last week, was asked on CNN whether Iran is America’s adversary. He was asked five times, and he never said yes.
I want you to read his answers for yourself, because this man will be voting on war, peace and our defense budget in January.
The exchange
Anchor Pamela Brown interviewed Hamawy on Tuesday. He told her he supports cutting off all military aid to Israel. When she asked, “So you don’t want any aid at all, any funding for military resources, equipment to Israel?” he answered, “Correct.”
Brown then asked whether he sees Iran as the adversary and Israel as an ally. “Well, now what I see is that we were pushed into this war by Israel,” Hamawy said. “It’s not helping Americans. Americans didn’t ask for it. It’s illegal. It’s immoral.”
“Do you see Iran as the adversary?” she asked. “I see we pushed them into a fight,” he replied.
“But are they the adversary?” Brown pressed. “We’re making adversaries when we should be making friends,” he said.
“They’ve been saying ‘death to America’ for decades,” Brown said. “We’ve been saying that to Iran for decades as well,” Hamawy answered, “and so what we need to do is use diplomacy.”
“They’ve killed a lot of Americans,” she said. “And we’ve killed a lot of them as well,” he replied.
Later in the interview, he called Iran’s government “authoritarian” and “a dictatorship” and said keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands is “a worthy objective.” He argued it should be done “diplomatically like the Obama administration did.”
Who he is
Hamawy is a plastic surgeon and former U.S. Army combat surgeon, and the New Jersey Globe reported he is the first Muslim elected to Congress from the state. He takes office in January as part of the new Democratic majority in the House.
Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., a former Navy SEAL, shared the clip with a warning on X: “Be warned America. Democrats are now in bed with the terrorists.”
The bottom line
I respect anyone who served this country as an Army surgeon, and Hamawy’s service deserves that respect. But when a man about to take a seat in Congress is asked about a regime that has chanted for our death since 1979 and answers that “we’ve been saying that to Iran for decades as well,” he has failed a very simple test.
The record is clear. The State Department has said Iran was responsible for the deaths of at least 603 American service members in Iraq. In the war that began on Feb. 28, Iran fired on U.S. bases across the Middle East, and this week its top security official threatened our bases in Europe. Putting that record on the same level as American policy is moral confusion, and it is dangerous in a lawmaker.
A member of Congress does not have to support every war to say plainly who our enemies are. Hamawy can oppose this one and still tell the truth about the regime on the other side.
The voters in his district chose him, and that is their right. But every American deserves to know where incoming members stand, and Hamawy has now told us. I hope every member of the new majority is asked the same question, and I hope they answer it the way Americans deserve.