Tulsi Gabbard is now team Trump. What are her views on the Middle East?
Hindutva, Zionism, and Islamophobia
As Gabbard was being lauded in her early career as a progressive star, she was also heavily praised by a number of other groups, including those espousing anti-Muslim, Hindu nationalist, and pro-Israel views.
For years, she has argued that "radical Islamic ideology" fuels terrorism, a common right-wing talking point. She criticised former President Barack Obama for not using the phrase "Islamic extremism".
"Let us #NeverForget that it was the Islamist ideology which inspired the terrorist attacks and declaration of war against America on 9/11," Gabbard said on X, formerly Twitter, in 2021.
"And it is this Islamist ideology that continues to fuel terrorist attacks around the world and is the foundation for so-called 'Islamic' countries like Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia’s discriminatory policies against Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, etc."
Gabbard has denied that she is Islamophobic.
Most recently, Gabbard has condemned the ongoing pro-Palestinian protest movement that has been taking place all over the country. The demonstrations have been taking place in protest of US support for Israel's war on Gaza, which human rights and legal experts, as well as several countries, have said is a genocide being perpetrated by Israel.
Gabbard, however, has accused the hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters of being puppets of a "radical Islamist organisation", in an apparent reference to Hamas.
The pro-Israel views of Gabbard are not dissimilar from those of many Democrats. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also accused pro-Palestinian protesters of being financed by foreign groups.
But in many instances, Gabbard has set herself apart from Democrats and embraced the full-throttle support of Israel of the Republican Party.
In 2015, she spoke at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference, a major right-wing and Christian pro-Israel organisation based in the US, where she lauded the US-Israel relationship.
Despite all of her anti-war and anti-US intervention views, Gabbard has supported Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children.
Even though she has supported ending US military support to foreign governments for helping fuel conflicts and wars, she doesn't extend that call to Israel and also opposed a ceasefire in Gaza.
According to a 2019 analysis by The Intercept, more than 100 individuals affiliated with the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) organisation have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gabbard's political campaigns since 2011, when she first ran for Congress.
She has also praised Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and claimed that there was "a lot of misinformation" around the 2002 Gujarat riots that took place while Modi served as Gujarat's chief minister.
A BBC documentary released last year revealed a previously unpublished report by British diplomats that concluded Modi was "directly responsible" for the "climate of impunity" that enabled the violence, in which around 2,000 people were killed in pogroms against the Muslim community.
As Gabbard now enters the transition team for the Trump campaign, it's unclear how influential her views would be. She is likely to be at odds with the many Iran hawks in the Republican Party.
But joining the Trump team could help Gabbard get closer than ever to her goal of having a commanding influence over the US's military policy if Trump were to win the election.