Mayor Pete Buttigieg claimed Friday that Christianity had its own extremist factions of faith similar to that of radical Islam in the Middle East.

Asked about the differences between Shia extremism followed in Iran versus Sunni extremism, the 2020 presidential candidate immediately compared radical Islam to Christianity.

“Well, you know, not unlike Christianity when it is motivating someone to do something extreme. It can have a thousand different flavors,” he said. “The real question is what’s going on with the regime, the government, that’s given the power and the apparatus of the state and intelligence service and a military, and what do they do with their ideology?”

Buttigieg commented on Christianity and Islam during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

The South Bend mayor also compared the radical Iran regime to President Donald Trump’s administration, insofar as whether they were representative of the entire population.

“You know, Iran, the Iranian regime does not speak for all of the Iranian people as a unit any more than, you know, you could say that there are no moderate politicians in the U.S., and we’re all secretly enthusiastic Trump supporters,” he said. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

Buttigieg lamented that the moderate Iran factions that wanted to work with the West and the United States were burned by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

“Imagine if you’re an Iranian politician who put all your eggs in the basket of saying let’s make a deal with the Americans. … now you’re going to have a lot of egg on your face,” he said.

Trump, he argued, was only empowering Iranian hardliners by allowing the United States to side with Saudi Arabia and putting more economic and political pressure on Iran.