Billionaire Bill Ackman has spent the last few days trying to get the U.S. military involved in Israel’s war on Iran. “The parade was great. Our military is incredible,” Ackman wrote on X on Saturday about Donald Trump’s flashy if damp Army pride parade through Washington D.C. “And now @Israel needs our help to destroy Iran’s nuclear threat to the world.” Ackman went on to argue that this is the “lowest-risk, highest-probability moment to take out Iran’s nuclear capability.” The day before, he put another $250,000 behind Andrew Cuomo’s bid to become the mayor of New York City. In total, Ackman has now donated $500,000 to Fix the City, a political action committee that’s raised more than $19 million to support Cuomo and target his main competition, Zohran Mamdani, a state assembly member.
A longtime donor to Democratic Party candidates, including Cuomo, Ackman has lately thrown his lot in with MAGA. The extremely online hedge fund manager donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican-aligned PACs in last year’s general election. He’s been an outspoken defender of the Trump administration who occasionally pleads with the president to see things his way on issues like tariffs and spats with Elon Musk. Now he wants the U.S. military to bomb Iran, despite reports that U.S. intelligence has found no evidence that the country is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon—the Israeli government’s claims notwithstanding. Does Andrew Cuomo want U.S. forces to bomb Iran too?
Asked for comment on whether Cuomo supported U.S. military intervention in Iran—including a prospective ground war that could involve New Yorkers fighting in the Middle East—campaign spokesman Rich Azzopardi referred me to a post Cuomo made on X last Saturday. It states that Iran is “bent” on destroying Israel and “has been causing fear and terror for too long.” The post didn’t specify a position on military action but said, “We stand firm with our family, friends and the nation of Israel.” Azzopardi declined to comment as to whether Cuomo had spoken with Ackman about the conflict.
A staunch supporter of Israeli government policy, Cuomo has called himself a “hyperaggressive supporter of Israel” and even joined Alan Dershowitz on a legal team to defend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against war crimes charges brought by the International Criminal Court. Like other independent expenditure committees, Fix the City is legally barred from coordinating with the Cuomo campaign, which has raised $400,000 from Republican and Conservative Party donors.
According to city campaign finance filings, Fix the City was responsible for the creation of a controversial mailer featuring an image of Mamdani, who is Muslim, that had been altered to make his beard bigger and eyes darker. The text of the mailer claims that Mamdani “rejects Israel” and “Jewish rights” and “refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.” Cuomo has frequently attacked Mamdani over his outspoken criticism of the Israeli government and Mamdani’s stated support for “Palestinian human rights, liberation, and Gaza.” During a mayoral debate earlier this month, when pressed about Israel’s right to exist “as a Jewish state,” Mamdani said he supports its right to exist “as a state with equal rights.” In a subsequent interview, he added that he is uncomfortable “supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else,” adding that “equality should be enshrined in every country in the world.”
Cuomo’s once sizable lead over Mamdani has narrowed in run-up to the Democratic primary on June 24; one recent poll showed Mamdani with a narrow lead over the former governor, who resigned from that position in disgrace in 2021 while facing a barrage of sexual harassment allegations. The momentum around the upstart candidate has prompted another influx of campaign spending in support of Cuomo. One billionaire who’s jumped into the fray—former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg—has previously supported the use of U.S. force in Iran. Bloomberg donated $5 million to Fix the City last week. While running for president in 2020, he told The New York Times that he would consider military force to “preempt” an Iranian nuclear or missile test.
In 2025, such an action is broadly unpopular. A YouGov poll released Tuesday found that just 16 percent of Americans support U.S. military involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Sixty percent—including a majority of both Republicans and Democrats—oppose U.S. military intervention in Iran. Mayors of New York City, of course, have little say over U.S. foreign policy. But with Cuomo and his supporters eager to turn the mayor’s race into a referendum on the direction of the Democratic Party and its support of the Israeli government, it’s worth asking whether he’ll value the opinions of warmongering billionaires over New York City voters.
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