Mamdani roasted for staying tight-lipped on 'war criminal' Pezeshkian after raging about Netanyahu

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing pushback for staying quiet on Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's arrival in the city this week, despite his vocal condemnation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mamdani, who on July 21, 2026, called Netanyahu a "war criminal" and an "architect" of "genocide" and said the Israeli leader should be arrested and barred from the city, has offered no comparable statement about Pezeshkian, who landed in New York Wednesday for the United Nations General Assembly. Mamdani has previously described Iran's government as "brutal" and pointed to its "systematic repression of its own people," but has not applied that rhetoric to Pezeshkian directly, according to Fox News.

Iranian-born journalist Masih Alinejad pressed Mamdani on the disparity in a social media post, telling him a "war criminal" was now in New York and challenging him to show the same courage toward "the man sleeping five miles from your office" that he showed toward Netanyahu. Alinejad, who survived a kidnapping plot near her Brooklyn home carried out by several men while Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei still led Iran, offered to let Mamdani review FBI records of the case. Director of National Intelligence Walter Clayton said in January that Tehran had organized a murder-for-hire scheme targeting Alinejad over her human rights activism, and one American-based participant received a 15-year prison sentence. Clayton described Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism running assassination campaigns against its critics both domestically and abroad. Fox News Digital contacted Mamdani's office for a response.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →