Freshman Democratic Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) expressed support for some of the Trump administration’s recent moves against Iran and its proxy groups in an interview with Jewish Insider last week, saying the U.S. needs to “get more hawkish and get more aggressive against Iran.”

Gillen — who unseated former Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) in November during her second House campaign — ran as a staunch supporter of Israel in a Nassau County, Long Island, swing district with a significant Jewish population.

She is quickly asserting herself as an advocate for Israel and the Jewish community (Five Towns falls in her district) in Congress in her first weeks in office, including voting for sanctions on the International Criminal Court, signing on as an original co-sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act and the HEAL Act, writing privately to the State Department to urge further action to counter the ICC and urging expedited approval of new flights from the U.S. to Israel.

Gillen, during a sit-down in her new congressional office, described herself as “hawkish” on Iran, calling for the U.S. to be “really tough” on the regime through strong sanctions cutting off funding to the regime and its proxy groups. 

She said she supported the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure sanctions campaign and its redesignation of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — something the Biden administration refused to do. She said she didn’t “think the United States did enough in response to attacks by the Houthis.”

But she was more skeptical of President Donald Trump’s interest in a new nuclear deal with Iran, saying that she was “very much against” the original nuclear agreement and that Iran can’t be trusted.

“I think if there was any deal that had to come with lots of inspections that they could not ignore or evade, it would depend on the terms of the deal,” Gillen said. “I do think that any deal that Trump would propose would be pretty aggressive, but I’m dubious that we could trust Iran in a deal. I think Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon, and we know that that’s what they’ve been trying to do, even when they had a deal. So I don’t know if a deal is the best way to go about that.”

Asked about the possibility of further U.S. strikes on Iranian proxies or Iran itself, Gillen largely demurred, saying she would rely on analysis from military and intelligence officials to which she does not yet have access.

Gillen added that she’s been “very clear in the short amount of time that I’ve been here … how fiercely I will defend Israel’s right to exist and to make sure that it has the resources it needs to defend itself.”

She said that she sees this as an area for bipartisan cooperation, particularly with colleagues from New York.

“I reached out to [Rep.] Mike Lawler right away to say, ‘How can we work together on things?’” Gillen said, referring to the New York Republican who has become a prominent pro-Israel voice in the House.

Asked about Trump’s proposal, announced the day before her conversation with JI, for the U.S. to take control of Gaza and redevelop it, Gillen said the U.S. should stay focused on returning the hostages to their families as its “top priority.”

She said she attended a memorial for Long Island native Omer Neutra, one of the Americans killed on Oct. 7 whose body is being held by Hamas, and described it as “heartbreaking, as a mother, as a human being, hearing the tributes to this young man who just seemed like a wonderful person.”

Gillen said that questions of how to rebuild Gaza can be addressed after there is a permanent cease-fire and all of the hostages are home, but added that she believes in a two-state solution as the pathway to peace.

To achieve that, Gillen continued, Hamas must be removed from power, requiring new leadership in the Gaza Strip. She said she also sees the Abraham Accords and the possibility of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia as a “really great step forward in establishing peace in the region, and I hope we can get back on that track again.”

She described the possibility of Israeli annexation of portions of the West Bank, on which Trump said he would announce U.S. policy in the coming weeks, as potentially “inflammatory” to the region at a time when the U.S. is trying to bring peace and stability.

She added that Trump is not “the be all and end all of what the best policy is in the Middle East” and that the U.S. should be taking input from Israel and other U.S. experts as it crafts its approach.

To protect the Jewish community at home, Gillen highlighted the Antisemitism Action Plan she released during her campaign. 

That plan called for the federal government to use the aid it provides schools to force changes in their codes of conduct, increase funding for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, fully fund federal law enforcement to coordinate responses to threats to synagogues and implement content moderation requirements for social media platforms to take down hateful content.

Gillen said she’s now working with fellow lawmakers and her staff to start implementing some portions of that legislation. She said she sees bipartisan support for “bolder steps” like leveraging funding to colleges to ensure that professors and students who engage in antisemitism are fired or expelled.

On social media, she called for stronger regulations on hate speech that incites violence, adding that she thinks there’s a bipartisan “appetite” for such legislation which “would be welcome with this administration as well.”

Gillen specifically called out a recent vandalism incident at Columbia University during which anti-Israel protesters flushed concrete into sewer lines and spray painted an academic building. She said that incident was a crime and called for the perpetrators to be prosecuted.

“We cannot have our students afraid to go to school,” Gillen continued. “We cannot have my citizens afraid to go to worship. And we have to make sure we have the resources to keep our synagogues and our other places of worship in our schools safe.”