The growing influence of Islamists linked to the Khomeinist Regime in the United States was shown on September 23, 2026, when a University of Michigan student of Iranian heritage named Iman Dashti asked Michigan’s Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed if he opposed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Confronting El-Sayed with his words from earlier this year that he would not comment on the death of Regime leader Ali Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today,” Dashti asked him “if you renounce the people who held vigils that supported this terrorist for all the stuff that he’s done.”
El-Sayed meandered and didn’t give a direct answer, instead criticizing US foreign policy and stating he didn’t believe the US government should engage in regime change.
He didn’t address the suffering faced by Dashti’s family, who had said “my cousin was hunted in the streets of Iran by the IRGC because her hijab wasn’t on right,” (Dashti later added that his cousin’s uncle had been sentenced to death and received 50 lashes.) Instead, Dashti became the victim of an online harassment campaign, which included the publication of his personal information.
El-Sayed went on to double-down on his apologia for Tehran during a debate with his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, on October 8. He equated the Islamic Regime to Israel, stating that “both of them have proven dangerous in their own way,” while condemning the US’s ongoing conflict with Tehran as “a war we shouldn’t be fighting, because here we are fighting this stupid war because people like him (Rogers) have been pushing for it for 20 years.”
This unwillingness even to appear to be opposed to the Khomeinist regime would have been shocking only a few years ago. The fact that El-Sayed feels he be can so frank about his opinions results from the reality that he has a voting base of Michiganders who share his views.
A strong case can be made that the thin margin by which Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Party primary on August 4 came from Muslims voters energized by Tehran-supporting clerics.
On July 31, Shi’a cleric Hassan Qazwini, head of the Islamic Institute of America, gave a Friday prayer sermon in Dearborn calling on congregants to vote for El-Sayed; “The way to deal the Zionist a bigger blow is to go and cast your vote on Tuesday, and don’t allow the Zionist candidate to win.”
El-Sayed himself had previously spoken at Qazwini’s Institute on June 6. The Qazwini family, several of whom are now serving as clerics in Michigan, are a religious dynasty from Karbala, Iraq, who relocated to Qom, Iran. Hassan Qazwini himself is a graduate of the same Qom hawzeh (seminary) where the regime leadership is educated.
Guest post by Banafsheh Zand at Iran So Far Away
The growing influence of Islamists linked to the Khomeinist Regime in the United States was shown on September 23, 2026, when a University of Michigan student of Iranian heritage named Iman Dashti asked Michigan’s Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed if he opposed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Confronting El-Sayed with his words from earlier this year that he would not comment on the death of Regime leader Ali Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today,” Dashti asked him “if you renounce the people who held vigils that supported this terrorist for all the stuff that he’s done.”
El-Sayed meandered and didn’t give a direct answer, instead criticizing US foreign policy and stating he didn’t believe the US government should engage in regime change.
He didn’t address the suffering faced by Dashti’s family, who had said “my cousin was hunted in the streets of Iran by the IRGC because her hijab wasn’t on right,” (Dashti later added that his cousin’s uncle had been sentenced to death and received 50 lashes.) Instead, Dashti became the victim of an online harassment campaign, which included the publication of his personal information.
El-Sayed went on to double-down on his apologia for Tehran during a debate with his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, on October 8. He equated the Islamic Regime to Israel, stating that “both of them have proven dangerous in their own way,” while condemning the US’s ongoing conflict with Tehran as “a war we shouldn’t be fighting, because here we are fighting this stupid war because people like him (Rogers) have been pushing for it for 20 years.”
This unwillingness even to appear to be opposed to the Khomeinist regime would have been shocking only a few years ago. The fact that El-Sayed feels he be can so frank about his opinions results from the reality that he has a voting base of Michiganders who share his views.
A strong case can be made that the thin margin by which Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Party primary on August 4 came from Muslims voters energized by Tehran-supporting clerics.
On July 31, Shi’a cleric Hassan Qazwini, head of the Islamic Institute of America, gave a Friday prayer sermon in Dearborn calling on congregants to vote for El-Sayed; “The way to deal the Zionist a bigger blow is to go and cast your vote on Tuesday, and don’t allow the Zionist candidate to win.”
El-Sayed himself had previously spoken at Qazwini’s Institute on June 6. The Qazwini family, several of whom are now serving as clerics in Michigan, are a religious dynasty from Karbala, Iraq, who relocated to Qom, Iran. Hassan Qazwini himself is a graduate of the same Qom hawzeh (seminary) where the regime leadership is educated.
Guest Contributor, Gateway Pundit
