While more than a dozen candidates are jostling against each other in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, a particularly heated rivalry has emerged since the first debate last week.

In that event, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blasted Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer, over his foreign policy views. And the two have been going at it ever since.

“Under your watch, you will make America less safe,” Haley said during the debate. “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

Haley, a former South Carolina governor, chastised Ramaswamy for saying he wants to cut off federal funding to Israel and negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war by accepting Russian control of occupied territories in Ukraine and blocking Ukraine from joining NATO. 

“He has shown that he’s naive,” Haley told Fox News this week. “He doesn’t think we need to continue to partner with Israel. 

“And it’s naive to say, ‘Oh, we’re going to go to Russia and tell them, ‘You quit playing with China,’” she added. “It’s just not accurate. I’m always going to take the side of Israel. I’m always going to take the side of us being strong when it comes against a terrorist group that says ‘Death to America.’ He’s completely wrong on this, and the American people see that.”

Ramaswamy has accused Haley of distorting his positions on Israel. He has said he would plan to honor the United States’ financial commitments to Israel through 2028 but then hopes the region is stable enough by then that additional aid to Israel won’t be needed. 

“We should not be worried about holding one nation or one region hostage over one particular question relating to Palestine,” Ramaswamy said on actor Russell Brand’s podcast, “Stay Free.” “Go to Abraham Accords. 2.0. That's good for Israel. It's good for the rest of the Middle East. It's good for us.”

A fact-check page on Ramaswamy’s website this week said: “Keep lying, Nimarata Randhawa. The desperation is showing.” 

Nimarata Randhawa is Haley’s given first and last names. She has gone by Nikki, her middle name, since childhood, and Haley is her last name by marriage. Initially, Haley’s legal first name was misspelled on Ramaswamy’s website. 

It’s not clear why the Ramaswamy campaign chose to refer to Haley, who, like Ramaswamy, is Indian-American, by her birth name.

Asked about it during a Fox News interview Monday, Haley said: “I'm not going to get into the childish name-calling or whatever, making fun of my name that he's doing."

A Ramaswamy campaign spokeswoman said in a statement to multiple media outlets: "How is he making fun of her name? His name is Vivek Ramaswamy.”

In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House communications director turned TV political commentator, accused Ramaswamy of using Haley’s birth name as “a dog whistle.”

“Crazy to see it coming from a fellow Indian American,” Griffin wrote.

The feud between the two White House hopefuls flared up again Thursday, a day after Israel Hayom posted an article in which Ramaswamy told the newspaper he would continue to support Israel’s military defense but virtually ruled out using U.S. troops in a potential conflict between Israel and Iran.

“Vivek must have missed that the fanatical terrorist regime in Iran regularly calls for ‘Death to America,’” Haley said in a statement. “If he doesn’t see a nuclear Iran as a threat to American security, then he should take his place beside AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.] and the Squad and get nowhere near the White House.”

Ramaswamy again said his words were being twisted.

“Another flagrant & dishonest distortion by the neocons,” he wrote on X. “Watch the actual video. I explicitly state we *would* fully support Israel, including militarily, but that we should *not* want U.S. men & women dying in a war between Israel and Iran.”

Two other Republican candidates, former Vice President Mike Pence and ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have also been stepping up their attacks on Ramaswamy since the debate, particularly on foreign policy.

Pence said Wednesday that Ramaswamy is “wrong on foreign policy, he’s wrong on American leadership in the world, he’s wrong on how we get this economy moving.”

Christie wrote in a post on X that Ramaswamy’s “foreign policy is to run and hide.” Christie criticized Ramaswamy’s plans for dealing with China and Taiwan. Ramaswamy has said he would end “strategic ambiguity with regard to Taiwan” and, if Taiwan wants the United States’ continued defense support, it must raise its own defense spending and military readiness to “acceptable levels.”

Christie also argued the result of the Russia-Ukraine war will send a message to Beijing when it comes to Taiwan.

Most polls showed debate watchers thought Ramaswamy either had the best or second best performance of the eight candidates on stage. FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average has Ramaswamy at 9.2%, trailing only former President Donald Trump (50.3%) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (14.8%).

“We are continuing to surge in the race, and that means the knives are continuing to come out,” Ramaswamy said in a video posted on social media Thursday. “So we're going to keep debunking the myths as they come up.”