Adam Hawamy, a New Jersey Democrat who was elected to the House last week, has refused to explicitly say that Iran is an adversary of the United States.
Hawamy, a plastic surgeon and former U.S. Army physician, had a contentious interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown on Tuesday and repeatedly avoided a “yes or no” answer to whether he viewed Iran as an enemy.
“Do you see Iran as the adversary and Israel as an ally to the US?” Brown first asked.
In response, Hawamy 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.”
Again Brown asked: “Do you see Iran as the adversary?”
“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?” Hawamy said.
For a third time, Brown asked if Iran was an adversary, to which Brown said, “We’re making adversaries when we should be making friends.”
This is when Brown mentioned that people inside Iran have been chanting “death to America” for decades.
“We’ve been saying death to Iran for decades as well, and so what we need to do is use diplomacy,” Hawamy said.
For a fourth time, Brown asked if he saw Iran as an adversary. This time, Hawamy said he favored an approach similar to Barack Obama’s when he was president.
“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, and our 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,” Hamawy said.