Abdul El-Sayed on the Iranian Regime: ‘I Condemn a Lot of Their Actions, But …’

EXCERPT:

EL-SAYED: "I condemn a lot of their action, but if you want a pathway to peace with folks, you’re gonna have to figure out how to get to a position of peace. I condemn, like, the Saudi human rights abuses too, but that’s not a question you’re asking me. So I'm just saying that, like, there are a lot of condemnable things that a lot of foreign governments have done, but the question for us has to be how do we promote our values and how do we do that in a way while we’re also promoting peace? And I just think this idea of, like, condemn or not condemn, right, is kind of an odd approach. I condemn the genocide that Israel has done. I condemn the apartheid too. I condemn the attack on democracy that Iran has done. But we engage with actors in a world where you kind of have to figure out how to make peace with people you disagree with. That’s what diplomacy is about. So the question of condemning and not condemning is actually secondary to the question of how should we get to a pathway to peace. I would like us to make peace with Iran, like President Obama did. I would like us to figure out how to stop subsidizing genocide and apartheid in other places. I would like us to figure out how to stop maybe making deals with countries like Saudi Arabia or the UAE, who are doing genocide in Sudan. I would like us to actually promote our values. So I would like us to get past a conversation of, like, do you condemn, do you not condemn? Can we actually objectively ask what our values are if we want to promote democracy all over the world?"