Ilhan Omar
Ilhan OmarReuters

A letter released by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in support of the Trump administration’s position on extending an arms embargo against Iran has elicited support from an unexpected source.

Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has criticized the pro-Israel lobby in the US and drawn criticism for accusing pro-Israel groups of buying support in Congress, is one of the 391 members of the US House of Representatives to sign onto an AIPAC-backed letter drawn up by Republican Mike McCaul (Texas) and Democrat Eliot Engel (New York).

The letter endorses the Trump administration’s position on the arms embargo against Tehran, and calls on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “extend these provisions in order to prevent Iran from buying and selling weapons.”

An embargo barring the sale of conventional weapons to Iran is set to be phased out incrementally starting this October, under the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

While much of both the Democratic and Republican caucuses in Congress have backed the letter, three of the four members of the “squad” – a group of progressive-left freshman congresswomen including Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), and Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) – have declined to sign on.

Omar’s office said the Minnesota Democrat has been ‘consistent’ in her support for arms embargos against human rights abusers, but emphasized that Omar differed with the Trump administration on the Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump withdrew from in 2018.

“Congresswoman Omar has consistently, for a long time, supported arms embargos against human rights abusers,” Omar’s office told Al-Monitor. “However, that is not to say that she supports Pompeo’s tactics or that her position on sanctions has changed, or that she is not in support of the [nuclear deal]. It was just a narrow ask that we couldn’t find anything wrong with.”