Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed faced a direct challenge from a young student during a town hall at the University of Michigan. Iman Dashti, whose family is in Iran, said relatives had endured horrors there.

Dashti brought two straightforward questions to the candidate.

Neither required a sweeping foreign policy lecture, yet both gave El-Sayed an opportunity to state clearly where he stood.

His first question concerned El-Sayed’s statement about holding back criticism of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because such criticism might make people in Dearborn sad. Dashti wanted the Senate candidate to address that position.

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The second question was even more direct.

Dashti asked whether El-Sayed would condemn the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also known as the IRGC.

El-Sayed did not condemn the IRGC or answer the question about Khamenei.

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The candidate’s polished delivery may have sounded convincing at first, but Dashti later concluded that the substance simply was not there.

Dashti subsequently appeared on Fox’s The Will Cain Show and explained his reaction to the exchange. His portion of the interview began at about the one minute mark.

Dashti acknowledged that “in the moment,” he believed El-Sayed had responded well.

It was an instructive admission about how a smooth delivery can initially conceal the fact that a direct question never received a direct answer.

That favorable first impression did not survive closer scrutiny.

Dashti realized afterward that El-Sayed had not answered either of his questions, and he ultimately called the response a “terrible answer.”

Dashti told host Will Cain that El-Sayed never condemned the IRGC and never addressed the question involving Khamenei.

He also noted that El-Sayed never said he stood with the Persian people, which was “the one thing I asked him to say.”

“It’s unbelievable. You know, you can be charismatic. You can say the right things. You can weave and duck. But he didn’t answer the question. And I think it’s a huge mask-off moment for Abdul,” Dashti said.

Cain noted that El-Sayed had said he supported people seeking democracy around the world.

Yet when Dashti presented a specific opportunity to condemn the IRGC, the candidate would not directly address it.

Dashti answered with an even sharper assessment of the candidate’s failure to take the rhetorical layup offered to him.

For Dashti, this was not a complicated request demanding a lengthy or carefully qualified response.

“I could not have given him an easier layup. I mean, it’s so simple. Just say it. Just say you’re against the world’s largest sponsor of terror. Just say you’re against the government that has killed hundreds of thousands of Persians. And Americans. But he didn’t.”

Dashti offered his own explanation for the refusal.

He said he believed many El-Sayed supporters were supportive of those institutions and the Iranian regime, and that “he doesn’t want to alienate them.”

Cain suggested that Dashti might have been generous in that analysis. The host raised another possible explanation, namely that El-Sayed himself does not denounce the IRGC.

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Whatever the explanation, Dashti drew out more with two simple questions than virtually all of the media had managed.

El-Sayed’s refusal to answer clearly should be disqualifying for someone seeking a seat in the United States Senate.

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