Michigan's Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed took harsh aim at JD Vance during a CNN interview, mocking the vice president's education and arguing that the Trump administration dragged the United States into an unnecessary war with Iran.
"First of all, Ohio State owes that boy a refund because he clearly didn't get anything from his education there," he said of Vance.
El-Sayed said the U.S. should never have started the war, pointing out that the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama had provided a diplomatic path to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions without resorting to military action.
"And the thing we should not have done is start the war in the first place," El-Sayed said. "In fact, we were in a state of peace with the potential for nuclear proliferation to be contained under the JCPOA under President Obama."
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Asked how the U.S. should proceed now, El-Sayed called for Congress to invoke the War Powers Resolution to end the military campaign and return the issue to diplomats. Ideally, he said, the administration should work toward restoring an agreement similar to the one Trump abandoned during his first term.
"We're going to call a War Powers Resolution and end their capacity to continue this war," he said. "And then we are going to put it in the hands of our diplomats who had addressed the issue in the first place under the Obama administration and move toward a place where we can get back to the kind of agreement we had."
"More war is not solving anything," he added. "It's getting us deeper into this quagmire."
El-Sayed questioned whether Trump understands that international disputes can be resolved through diplomacy rather than warfare. He suggested the president had become overconfident in the U.S. military after the operation that captured Venezuela's leader, and warned that starting a war is far easier than finding a way out.
The conflict, El-Sayed argued, has failed to achieve its objectives. The U.S. has not secured control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the fighting has spread beyond the boundaries originally envisioned.
Instead of escalating a war that is accomplishing little, El-Sayed urged the administration to end the military campaign and let diplomats pursue a negotiated solution — the kind of approach he said had worked before Trump tore up the first agreement.
