If you were Zohran Mamdani's new Commissioner in the Office of International Affairs, charged with reaching out to government officials from countries that ideologically align with the mayor, who would you reach out to?
The answer is obvious: Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations.
It's a natural fit, right?
— Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) July 9, 2026
So that is what Commissioner Ana María Archila decided to do: she scheduled a meeting with Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations, to discuss how the City of New York and the regime in Tehran could work together for mutual benefit.
Perhaps they could share a "Death to the United States" and "Death to Israel" chant to start off a productive meeting.
The meeting between Archila and Iravani was called off after the State Department—which was not informed ahead of time—met with the Mamdani administration to clarify acceptable conduct, according to the State Department official. City Journal learned that Commissioner Archila allegedly did not inform Mayor Mamdani of the meeting; she was reprimanded for the move and directed to cancel the meeting according to the source familiar with the office.
“This meeting did not and will not take place,” a spokesperson with the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs said in a statement. The Iranian mission did not return multiple requests for comment.
The development is a continuation of Commissioner Archila and the Mamdani administration’s ongoing use of public resources to advance an agenda that extends well beyond New York City. On April 16, a message seen by City Journal was sent to staff within the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs asking them to prioritize diplomatic engagement in part based on whether foreign officials “are . . . in political alignment/leftist.” The message confirms previous reporting by El País, noting that Archila has “focused . . . on deepening relations with foreign leaders who share Mamdani’s worldview.”
Archila was a perfect choice for Mamdani to run that office, which was originally created to liaise with foreign diplomats in New York City and to do the sort of business outreach that all big cities do to expand international trade with their cities. It's hard to say whether such efforts bear fruit—I doubt anyone invests in New York City only after the mayor's office reaches out to them —but local officials are big on these efforts.
Archila was perfect because she doesn't give a fig about such mundane things as business; she served as co-director of the progressive Working Families Party, whose official position is that the war in Iran “can and must be stopped,” before joining the mayor's staff. She's about what you would expect for a Mamdani appointment—radically progressive with an abiding disgust for American values.
I have no idea whether there would be any legal barriers to the meeting; I doubt it, unless she passed on security information available to the mayor of the country's #1 target of terrorism.
But legal or not, the US is engaged in hostilities with Iran, and there is no obvious connection between her job and the Iranian ambassador.
Not that it matters. This is who Mamdani and his acolytes are. They can't even stand to recognize that there is a Little Italy in New York City. It is too "white."
Mayor Mamdani's map of NYC immigrant neighborhoods sparks outrage for ignoring Little Italy: 'Terrible mistake' https://t.co/dR97RS7CPz pic.twitter.com/dKvqap5K2a
— New York Post (@nypost) July 8, 2026
It's like all those maps of the Middle East that label Israel as "Palestine."
Pure Mamdani.
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