Zohran Mamdani’s rise to the cusp of the New York City mayoralty has attracted the Iranian opposition’s interest. Most of the opposition see it as a moral blow to their anti-Islamic Republic cause. Monarchists go as far as to compare him with Ruhollah Khomeini, who promised Iranians the world and voiced democratic principles prior to assuming power, only to pursue a regressive ideological agenda once he consolidated control.
Comparing Mamdani with Khomeini is easy. Mamdani is a Twelver Shi’ite, anti-Zionist and likely antisemite, but the similarities with Khomeini end there. Mamdani is not an Islamist. His wife dresses like a millennial New Yorker, and he holds far-left views on gay and transgender issues. Such positions would outrage Khomeini.
Mamdani channels a Third World paradigm between exploiter and the exploited.
Perhaps a better analogy lies elsewhere in the Middle East. Hudson Institute’s Zineb Riboua draws parallels between Mamdani and the Algerian Revolution. She argues that Mamdani channels a Third World paradigm between exploiter and the exploited. “What Mamdani represents is not a new movement but the return of an older sensibility that America itself once resisted and outlasted,” she explains. “His stances on housing, policing, and Palestine channel global anti-imperial heritage into American realities. The landlord morphs into the colonizer, the tenant into the colonized.”
Nor would Mamdani be the first for whom Algeria would be influential. Former Iran envoy Rob Malley’s mother Barbara Silverstein Malley cut her socialist teeth working for the United Nations delegation of Algeria’s National Liberation Front.
Still, while Riboua adds context to Mamdani’s views, she fails to take a measure of how much being a Muslim, practicing or not, informs Mamdani’s politics. He is not an Islamist, but he is a Muslim tribalist.
According to this tribalist view, the white race has exploited Middle Eastern Muslims along with the rest of the Third World. He sees Jews as white settlers and Palestinians as colored natives. For Mamdani, Muslims are first among unequals. It is in this context that Mamdani falsely stated his aunt feared wearing a hijab in New York after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Mamdani’s tribalism manifested itself in his condemnation of attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites, initial omission of Muslim states in his condemnation of ethno-states, refusal to call on Hamas to put down its arms, and his association with radical imams. Despite his personal life, he views solidarity as essential.
Here, he resembles former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Like Mamdani, Mosaddegh acceded to power through democratic procedures before usurping them. Like Mamdani, he was also a secular leader whose work was marked by knee-jerk hatred of foreign powers, even if it cost his constituencies. Mamdani’s support for the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions movement fits this parallel, as it would hurt the New York economy the same way Mosaddegh’s rejection of the American offer to extract oil hurt the Iranian economy.
Mosaddegh’s effort to nationalize the oil industry fed into anti-Western sentiments seeking “independence.” The Persian word for independence, esteqlal, also became one of the cries of the 1979 revolutionaries. Beyond such rhetoric, though, Mosaddegh’s real ambition was to bring Iran’s oil industry under state control.
The politics of “anti” has plagued the region for a century, rallying populations against outside powers, but never advancing liberalism.
Mosaddegh was a secular leader, but his Muslim tribalism surfaced in relations with Israel. After becoming prime minister in 1951, he closed Iran’s consulate in Jerusalem and opposed German reparations to Israel. Personally, he viewed Israel as a British colonial project. He included the faithful in his coalition and empowered Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani, who introduced anti-Zionism into mainstream Iranian politics. For Mosaddegh, anti-Zionism combined political convenience, tribalism, and Third Worldism.
Politics is easier to organize around a negative sentiment than a positive principle. The politics of “anti” has plagued the region for a century, rallying populations against outside powers, but never advancing liberalism.
The American elite have turned the likes of Mosaddegh and Algerian revolutionaries into heroes. The Iranian diaspora largely embraces capitalism and secularism, due to its negative experience with religious tribalism and leftism. Mamdani’s celebrity demoralizes them. Wary that elites might confuse Mosaddegh analogies with endorsements, they embrace an inaccurate Khomeini comparison instead.
