Mamdani blasts Trump administration’s 'catastrophic’ and ‘illegal’ strikes in Iran
The mayor’s forceful condemnation comes just two days after he had a “productive” meeting with Trump at the White House.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York, Feb. 17, 2026. | Seth Wenig/AP
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the U.S. military strikes on Iran Saturday, stress-testing his increasingly productive working relationship with President Donald Trump.
“Today’s military strikes by the United States and Israel mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal act of war of aggression,” Mamdani said Saturday at an unrelated event in Brooklyn. “Bombing cities, killing civilians, opening up a new theater of war — Americans do not want this. Americans do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. We want an answer to the affordability crisis. We want peace.”
Mamdani’s condemnation of Trump’s military move comes on the heels of their Thursday meeting at the White House — after which Mamdani told reporters he and Trump had a “productive” talk about housing development in New York City and that he looks forward to continuing to work with the president.
The whiplash between that cordial tone and Saturday’s forceful rebuke of the strikes highlights the delicate nature of Mamdani’s balancing act, as he tries to work with the president without tying himself too closely to a figure hated by his political base.
In criticizing Trump on any given issue, Mamdani risks angering the mercurial president, who has so far held off on subjecting New York to the sort of mass ICE deployments and federal funding cuts with which he’s hit other blue cities. At the same time, Mamdani did not touch off blowback from the president when he questioned the legality of the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, last month.
“In my relationship with the president, it has always been one that has also been honest and direct, where both of us make clear our policy disagreements, both in public and in private, and I think it’s important to be on the record here, given the scale of the consequences that we are speaking about,” Mamdani said.
During his mayoral campaign, some of Trump’s more vitriolic attacks directed at the now-mayor was due to his foreign policy stances. Mamdani suggested he would seek the arrest of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu should he step foot in New York.
The mayor’s Saturday missive came over nine hours after Trump announced in a pre-dawn video statement that the U.S. had initiated “major combat operations” inside Iran.
The president explicitly stated that the goal of the incursion is regime change, saying once the bombs stop falling, Iranians should “take over” the country’s government from the hardline clerics who have ruled with an iron fist for decades.
Iranian media reported that among the casualties were dozens of students killed in a strike on a school for young girls. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was also targeted in the strikes, with plumes of smoke billowing from his compound in the capital of Tehran, according to reports. Khamenei’s condition was not immediately known.
Mamdani’s NYPD reacted to the dramatic development before he did, issuing a statement early Saturday morning saying the department is “enhancing patrols to sensitive locations throughout the city, including diplomatic, cultural, religious and other relevant sites” in light of the U.S. military operation.
“We are increasing agency coordination as well as patrols of sensitive locations out of an abundance of caution,” he said Saturday afternoon.
The mayor also had a message for Iranian New Yorkers: “You are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders,” he said. “You will be safe here.”
