Graham Platner, the progressive Maine Senate candidate, in a CNN interview that aired Sunday accused Israel of committing genocide and said the U.S. should cut off all aid, as well as dismissed concerns that bringing the Iran war to a halt would endanger U.S. forces in the region.

“I fundamentally believe that a nation that is committing a genocide should not be a place that we are putting money. We should be leveraging the fact that we have a lot of power in this relationship due to our funding,” Platner said in the interview. “We should be leveraging that to, frankly, get the Israeli government to stop behaving in such an utterly atrocious fashion.”

Platner said that he would vote against any further funding for the war in Iran, dismissing concerns that cutting funding for the war would leave U.S. forces in harm’s way, despite ongoing attacks by Iran.

“I’ve been very close to the realities of wars [in Iraq], and that was a war that never should have happened, and that we find ourselves here with another war that should not be happening, that is resulting in destruction and horror, all, frankly, on the taxpayers dime,” Platner said. “That is money that should be spent here in the United States, on schools, on hospitals, on infrastructure.”

He said that U.S. troops would not be in danger if Congress defunds the operation “because the troops should not be in harm’s way. End the war. Bring people home. Stop bombing. We started this thing, we can end it.”

Platner said he believes the Trump administration started the war to distract from revelations in the Epstein files because “Benjamin Netanyahu finally found a president that was sucker enough to launch the war that he’s been pushing for for 30 years.”