Among elected officials and Iranian Americans in the New York City area, the response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and the killing of the country’s longtime leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ranged from fervent opposition to unrestrained celebration.
New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, condemned the attacks on Saturday as “a catastrophic escalation in an illegal act of war of aggression.”
Mr. Mamdani, a Democrat, added: “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.”
Brad Lander, the former city comptroller who is running for Congress, had even stronger words on Sunday.
“This is an illegal war being waged by a sociopathic president whose goal is to distract people from his failing administration,” Mr. Lander said.
Other New York politicians were more restrained in their criticism. Mr. Lander’s opponent in the Democratic primary, Representative Dan Goldman, said in a statement that Iran had a “treacherous regime” but added, “Recent history has taught us that toppling Middle East dictators in the name of regime change is the beginning — not the end — of a process that too often results in expensive and deadly forever wars.”
Julie Menin, a Democrat and the first Jewish speaker of the City Council, stopped short of agreeing with Mayor Mamdani but criticized President Trump’s unilateral action, saying, “The Constitution entrusts Congress with the solemn responsibility to decide questions of war and peace.”
For some Iranian American New Yorkers, the response to the attacks was much more complicated than rejoicing over the death of a dictator.
Bahareh Ebne Alian, a junior fellow at the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at The New School who has studied Iran extensively, was among those who were wary.
“There are people who are extremely fearful of what this war — that doesn’t seem to have a very clear end — is going to bring to Iran,” Ms. Ebne Alian said, “in terms of civil war, in terms of the disintegration of Iran, or in terms of just another failed state in the region.”
Ms. Ebne Alian, 38, who has lived in New York since 2009, added: “There are those of us who have seen that no country receives democracy with bombs, or freedom with bombs. And actually, I think this really complicates any prospect of a peaceful transition to democracy by Iranian people.”
Etan Mabourakh, a Jewish Iranian American who is on the board of the organization Brooklyn for Peace and serves as an organizing manager with the National Iranian American Council, said, “Iranian Americans who don’t want their homeland bombed need to be heard in this moment.”
“When they bomb elementary schools, killing 85 schoolgirls, that doesn’t bring freedom and democracy,” he added, referring to a strike in southern Iran on Saturday.
Staunch supporters of the president’s actions included New York City’s former mayor, Eric Adams, who was sharply critical of Mayor Mamdani’s response, and Fabien Levy, an Iranian American who served as deputy mayor under Mr. Adams.
Mr. Levy lashed out at Mr. Mamdani on X, writing, “Now, as every single Persian and person of Persian descent praying for a free Iran looks for a regime change, you say nothing that provides our families comfort.”
Another supporter of the attacks was Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Republican who represents a Brooklyn district. On Saturday, she posted on X: “The world is safer today because US & Israel eliminated a top sponsor of GLOBAL TERRORISM.”
In Great Neck, on Long Island, where there is a large Jewish Iranian American community, the attacks brought a sense of hope.
At the Everfresh Supermarket on Middle Neck Road, shoppers perused aisles of Middle Eastern spices and kosher foods.
“The minute I walked in, I noticed a lightness in the store, a happiness,” said Laurence Goldstein, the store’s manager. “I’m surprised there hasn’t been a parade up and down the road in favor of what’s going on.”
Kathy Cohen, 52, an employee at the market, was born in Tehran and fled Iran when she was 15. Her memories are vivid. “Me as a child standing in line for class, we had to say ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Israel,’ or they wouldn’t let you go to class,” she said. “Every single morning we had to say this.”
Pejman Touby, the executive director of Colbeh, a Persian restaurant in Great Neck, said that he and 30 of his employees drank shots of tequila in the early morning hours of Sunday to celebrate the news of the ayatollah’s death.
Mr. Touby, 53, emigrated from Tehran in 1985 when he was 13. He and his 11-year-old brother walked for weeks with a group of strangers across the mountains into Pakistan and finally traveled to Vienna, where they stayed in a refugee camp as they waited for entry into the United States.
The rest of his family arrived in Great Neck 15 years later. None of them have returned to Iran. “It’s our dream to go back there on a vacation,” Mr. Touby said. “My father cannot wait. He wants to go on the first plane.”
In the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, which has a large Palestinian Muslim population, many residents criticized the attacks and the role of Israel.
Ahmad Abuobead, 31, who is Palestinian and works as a chef, said the U.S. and Israeli actions were “an illegal attack to a sovereign country.”
He added, “I don’t think the U.S. has the right to actually just go ahead and just attack a country and kill its president — which is more like an assassination.”
Ellen Yan, Tara Terranova and Sally Goldenberg contributed reporting.
Dodai Stewart is a Times reporter who writes about living in New York City, with a focus on how, and where, we gather.
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