Mamdani Smacked Down By State Dept. After His Team Tried to Meet With Iran’s Ambassador

Archila was ‘reprimanded.’ The meeting was canceled. And Mamdani’s office is now claiming he didn’t know about it.

That’s the most charitable interpretation available, and it still isn’t particularly reassuring. Either the mayor of New York City has zero control over what his own senior officials are doing with Iran’s UN ambassador — or he knew about it and is lying. Neither option inspires confidence in a man who already claimed to have been “briefed” on the Venezuela operation, then humiliatingly had to admit he had no federal security clearance whatsoever.

This isn’t the first time the State Department has had to slam the brakes on Mamdani’s international freelancing. Last month, his administration planned a meeting with leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro — a man who attended a Mamdani rally in September. The State Department declined to issue Petro a visa. The meeting was canceled. And Archila separately took a two-day taxpayer-funded trip to Barcelona to attend a conference hosted by the Party of European Socialists.

The pattern is not subtle. Mamdani has assembled an administration that shares his instinct to conduct independent foreign policy — cozying up to America’s adversaries and ideological fellow travelers while treating America’s closest allies as criminals. He opposed Operation Epic Fury from day one. He called the Iran strikes “an illegal act of war.” He wants to arrest Netanyahu. And his team was on their way to a quiet meeting with Tehran’s man at the UN.