Colorado Democratic Socialist candidate Melat Kiros said the September 11 terror attacks were “inevitable” because of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, during a new interview with Colorado’s Next 9News.

Kiros was asked about earlier comments she made on far-left streamer Hasan Piker’s show, where she called the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel “an inevitable consequence of apartheid, of occupation, decades of occupation.” She pushed back on the idea that she meant Israel “had it coming,” saying the issue was about “understanding the conditions in which violence and war happen.”

9News journalist Kyle Clark then asked whether she also believed 9/11 was an “inevitable consequence” of American foreign policy. “Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East, which led people to believe that another act of violence was the only response. And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros said.

Before launching her campaign, Kiros was fired from Sidley Austin in 2023 after publishing an open letter criticizing law firms, including her own, for calling for action against antisemitism on college campuses. In the letter, she accused firms of “chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy.”

Kiros is the latest candidate backed by the Democratic Socialists of America seeking to defeat an incumbent Democrat ahead of the midterm elections, as the party’s far-left wing continues trying to expand its influence in deep-blue districts.