Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and outspoken critic of the Iranian regime, tore into New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Saturday for his public condemnation of U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran, telling him to "STOP lecturing us Iranians about peace."
The strikes on Saturday targeted several top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed. And while Iranian dissidents celebrated, Mamdani rushed to social media to mourn the moment.
The New York City mayor spoke out against the strikes on Saturday in a statement on social media:
Today's military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. 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. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace.
According to Fox News, there's a particular kind of politician who can watch one of the world's most brutal theocracies lose its grip on power and immediately pivot to talking points about "affordability." Mamdani is that politician.
Notice what's missing from his statement. No mention of the Iranian regime's decades of terror sponsorship. No mention of the assassination plots it has carried out on American soil. No acknowledgment that the "civilians" governed by that regime have been among its most brutalized victims. Mamdani frames the Iranian people as bystanders to American aggression. Alinejad, who has lived under the regime's crosshairs, knows better.
Alinejad was the target of an Iranian assassination plot in 2024 as a critic of the Iranian regime. She doesn't need lectures about peace from a man who stayed silent while Iranian agents operated in his own city.
She wrote on X, addressing Mamdani directly:
To you, Zohran Mamdani! You stayed quiet when we have faced massacre, when Islamic Republic assassins were sent here in New York to kill us, stay quiet now! STOP lecturing us Iranians about peace.
She didn't stop there. Alinejad referenced Mamdani's remarks about "safety" in the city and said "safety without justice" meant nothing. Then she made it personal:
I don't feel safe in New York listening to someone like you, Mamdani, who sympathizes with the regime that killed more than 30,000 unarmed Iranians in less than 24 hours.
That's the voice of someone who has actually lived under the boot Mamdani can't be bothered to name. More than 30,000 unarmed Iranians. Not in a war zone. Not as collateral damage. Killed by their own government.
The people of Iran want to be free. Where were you when they needed solidarity? New York belongs to people who stand against terrorism not those who excuse it.
This is the pattern that never changes. When a brutal regime faces consequences, a certain faction of the American left discovers its pacifism. When that same regime murders its own citizens, tortures dissidents, and dispatches assassins to American cities, the silence is deafening.
Mamdani had nothing to say when Iranian operatives plotted to kill Alinejad in New York. He found his voice only when the regime that sent them began to lose.
That tells you everything about whose "safety" he's actually concerned with.
Alinejad spoke to CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday alongside Moj Mahdara, an Iranian-American entrepreneur and co-founder of the Iranian Diaspora Collective. Mahdara delivered a message her party probably doesn't want to hear:
I think that it is imperative the Democratic Party wake up and get past their dislike of Donald Trump, President Trump, and their feelings of international conflicts going on. This is about national security. This is about what is possible in the Middle East. This is about being a good neighbor, good partner to the Gulf States and what their aspirations are."
It shouldn't take courage to say that on national television, but in today's Democratic Party, it does. The instinct to oppose anything associated with this administration has become so reflexive that some Democrats would rather stand with a theocratic regime than acknowledge a national security win.
Mahdara is right. This isn't about feelings. It's about whether you're serious about the Middle East or whether you'd rather lose a geopolitical moment than give the other party credit for it.
New York City's Mayor's Office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. That tracks. Mamdani had plenty to say when the strikes happened. Faced with an Iranian-American journalist asking why he never stood up for Iranians living under terror, he went quiet.
Alinejad survived an assassination plot on American soil. She has buried friends and watched a movement for freedom get crushed by the very regime Mamdani rushed to defend. She has earned the right to ask where he was.
He wasn't anywhere. And everyone noticed.
