New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced sharp criticism after he declined to answer whether Iran is better off without Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei was killed last week in an Israeli strike in Tehran, and reporters pressed the mayor directly about Iran’s future.
When asked, “Mr. Mayor, do you think Iran is better off without the ayatollah?” Mamdani refused to say yes or no and instead emphasized the regime’s brutality and dangers of regime change.
He said, “I’ve said before that the Iranian government has engaged in systematic repression of its own people, even killing thousands of Iranians who were seeking to express the most basic forms of dissent earlier this year.”
He added, “It is a brutal government, and I’ve also said that while I may be a young mayor, I am old enough to remember the devastating consequences of our country pursuing a war with the intent of regime change in that very same region not that many years ago.”
Conservatives quickly accused Mamdani of softening the moral case for removing a tyrant and argued his answers sounded closer to siding with Iran than backing freedom-seeking Iranians.
The controversy followed a viral post in which Mamdani condemned U.S. and Israeli strikes as an unlawful escalation.
He wrote, “Today’s military strikes on Iran, carried out by the United States and Israel, mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression.”
He continued, “Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war. Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change.”
Mamdani argued Americans want “relief from the affordability crisis” first, a point critics said tried to shift focus away from Iran’s terror network, nuclear ambitions and repression of its own people.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Supporters of the operation and many Trump backers say removing Khamenei weakened one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror and opened a chance for Iranians to pursue a different future.
Critics like Mamdani warn that deeper involvement risks another costly, unintended war framed as regime change.
