Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged reports on Friday that New York City’s commissioner for international affairs had arranged to meet with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, but said the arrangement was “made in error” and the meeting had not taken place.
The proposed meeting involving the commissioner, Ana María Archila, and the ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, was first reported in City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
Mr. Mamdani said at an unrelated news conference that he had not been aware of the proposed meeting until the administration received a press inquiry about it. The proposal “was a request that came in” to the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, he said, “not one that originated from the office.” City Hall is working on a new protocol for managing meeting requests, he said.
The subject of the proposed meeting was not clear. Ms. Archila’s office was reprimanded over the incident, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The work of the international affairs office, Mr. Mamdani said at the news conference, includes ensuring that “as we are a city of the world, that we are also there to meet with leaders from across the world.” But, he added, “the focus is always on our city.”
Ms. Archila’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment.
The timing of the revelation was, to say the least, uncomfortable for Mr. Mamdani’s administration.
The United States has ramped up attacks in its war with Iran in recent days, as a week of funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei concluded. Iran said it had responded by firing at U.S. military bases in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The State Department said in a statement on Friday that it was “unconscionable” that a New York City official would consider meeting with the Iranian ambassador, and that the department appreciated that the meeting had been canceled.
City Journal reported that the meeting had been called off after the State Department intervened. Another person familiar with the matter disputed that assertion on Friday evening, saying that it had been canceled because of a scheduling conflict, but declined to provide further details.
Soon after President Trump was elected to a second term in November 2024, Ambassador Iravani met in New York with Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who was then a top adviser to Mr. Trump. Two Iranian officials said at the time that the two men discussed how to defuse tensions between the United States and Iran.
Ms. Archila, who was appointed in February, does not have significant experience in diplomatic affairs. She previously served as co-director of the left-leaning Working Families Party. She has also co-founded and led progressive organizations like Make the Road New York and the Center for Popular Democracy, which serve immigrant and vulnerable New Yorkers.
Typically, high-level meetings in the Mamdani administration are orchestrated cautiously and with transparency across offices, according to a person familiar with the administration’s workings.
The proposed meeting was not the first misstep by City Hall this week. The mayor also faced blowback over a map released by City Hall of immigrant enclaves in New York City that excluded Little Italy and some Jewish communities.
Mr. Mamdani said at the news conference on Friday that Little Italy would be added, noting that the map was initially made by the previous administration. “It’s clearly not an exhaustive list,” he said.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
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