Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate in Michigan, released a new ad featuring the University of Michigan student who confronted his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, over his positions on Iran and its repressive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a viral exchange last week.

In the 30-second campaign ad posted on Friday, Imam Dashti, who identifies as Persian American, says that his family “escaped oppression in Iran and found freedom in America,” before calling El-Sayed “a real threat to our national security and our values.”

“Abdul raises money from dangerous people who finance terrorist networks, and his family has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida,” Dashti alleges. “I know the threats of radical Islam, and I know Abdul El-Sayed can never, ever be a U.S. senator.”

A spokesperson for Rogers’ campaign confirmed to Jewish Insider the seven-figure ad buy, launched in conjunction with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is running statewide on digital platforms and will begin airing on TV on Saturday.

The ad comes after Dashti had confronted El-Sayed during a town hall last week at the University of Michigan, pressing the Democrat to unequivocally condemn the Iranian regime. He also voiced dismay over leaked audio in which El-Sayed admitted he did not want to comment publicly on the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, after he was killed during U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in February at the start of the Iran war.

“That silence had a gaping hole in our community,” Dashti said, asking El-Sayed if he stands “unequivocally against the IRGC,” the Islamic Republic’s hardline military force.

In his response, El-Sayed did not explicitly denounce Iran or the IRGC even as he also clarified during a heated back-and-forth that he wants “freedom and democracy for the people of Iran — no question.”

El-Sayed further confirmed that he will “always stand for and with democratic movements,” but clarified he did not “believe that we were in the right to go to war to topple the government of Iran,” reiterating his criticism of President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a war against the Islamic Republic. 

While El-Sayed’s comments drew applause at the town hall, his answers soon faced backlash after they had circulated online. Dashti later went on Fox News to speak out against El-Sayed before shooting the ad for Rogers.

In a social media message accompanying the ad, Rogers said that Dashti “and his family deserve better than someone connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda.”

“They deserve someone who stands up to the IRGC, not someone who defends it,” he added. “Michigan deserves better.”

A spokesperson for El-Sayed did not respond to a request for comment about the ad, the latest in a series of attacks from Rogers seeking to cast his opponent as a terrorist sympathizer aligned with extremists.

Rogers, a former congressman who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last cycle, has long been a vocal critic of Iran and had initially backed Trump’s decision to attack the Islamic Republic. 

But as the war has emerged as a vulnerability for Republicans amid voter dissatisfaction with rising prices, Rogers has more recently called for an end to the conflict — underscoring a rare point of alignment with El-Sayed in their bitterly contested race to win a key battleground state.

“The war in Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” Rogers argued in an ad his campaign released last month. “When it does, energy costs will plummet — but Michigan families can’t afford to wait for that to happen.”