Zohran Mamdani’s DSA allies rage against U.S. airstrikes, brand the Ayatollah’s death “extrajudicial,” and vow to dismantle America’s defense establishment.

New York’s socialist crown jewel has spoken.
This week, nearly a thousand activists joined a “Hands Off Iran” call hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the same organization that boosted Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But instead of condemning Tehran’s brutal record, DSA leaders mourned the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a man whose militias crushed women for taking off hijabs — and called his U.S. strike “extrajudicial.”

The event opened with a protest remix of a 1960s Dylan song. What followed was not peace activism. It was open hostility toward the United States.

Ahmed Husain, a member of DSA’s national committee, declared the group’s mission “to put an end to the U.S. empire.” He called America a “warmonger,” urging members to mobilize “in your neighborhoods, your workplaces, even your families.” His past posts are even harsher: demanding the destruction of the “decaying fascist American empire” and denying Israel’s right to exist.

“Mourning the Supreme Leader”

Speaker Isabella Javidan of the National Iranian American Council lamented “the extrajudicial killing of the supreme leader.”
“People are in deep mourning,” she said.

For most Iranians, mourning Khamenei is unthinkable. His Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) executed protesters, journalists, and teenage girls. He ordered mass arrests in the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Yet here, on a Wednesday night Zoom run by self-styled “progressives,” his death was framed as a tragedy.

The contradiction is staggering. The same DSA that stayed silent while Iranian women were hanged from cranes now calls his killing a human-rights violation.

The Optics Problem

The event’s promotional poster didn’t help.
It featured the flag of the Islamic Republic — the symbol flown by riot police who fired on demonstrators in Tehran. On Instagram, Iranian diaspora activists erupted.
“Featuring the regime flag is a slap in the face,” wrote one. “You didn’t care when they murdered my friends for protesting.”
Another commenter cut deeper: “You only care about human rights when it suits your narrative. Respect Iranians, or shut up.”

The DSA ignored the backlash. They pressed on, casting Iran’s bloody 1979 revolution as a heroic overthrow of Western “imperialism.” No mention of the 66 Americans taken hostage that same year. No acknowledgment that Khomeini replaced one tyranny with another.

For an organization that claims to champion justice, DSA’s selective outrage raises a simple question: whose justice?

Silence from the Top

Neither Zohran Mamdani nor AOC has publicly commented on their comrades’ Iran call. But both hold ties to the DSA that are anything but symbolic.
Mamdani, now mayor of New York City after last fall’s shocking upset, owes much of his rise to DSA’s field power. He’s appeared at DSA events defending “anti-imperialist solidarity” with Palestine and Cuba.
AOC, though more cautious lately, still sits under the DSA umbrella and has never renounced it — despite years of antisemitic and anti-American rhetoric from within the organization.

When extremists in your political home call for dismantling the “U.S. war machine,” and mourn the death of America’s sworn enemy, silence is complacency.
Voters should be asking: do these leaders agree with their colleagues that Khamenei’s death was “extrajudicial”? Do they agree that America itself must be brought down?

Who Benefits

Follow the incentives.
By framing U.S. military action as “imperialism,” DSA shifts the blame for global violence away from autocrats and onto American institutions — the same institutions they want to replace. Each “anti-war” campaign doubles as fundraising and recruitment, drawing in disaffected young people eager to oppose “the empire.”
It’s political branding disguised as moral purity.

Meanwhile, groups like the National Iranian American Council — which has repeatedly lobbied against U.S. sanctions on Tehran — gain fresh allies in the socialist left. Every narrative that weakens confidence in U.S. defense policy helps the clerical regime’s longevity.

The pattern repeats:

• Defend Maduro’s Venezuela as “socialist democracy.”
• Excuse Hamas violence as “resistance.”
• Now, mourn Khamenei as a martyr and condemn America’s strike.

When every enemy of the United States is framed as a victim, “anti-imperialism” turns into advocacy for despots.

The Enforcement Question

The Biden White House, already under pressure to contain post-strike fallout, has not commented on DSA’s rhetoric. But the question is not legal — it’s moral and political.
Why do groups like DSA continue to enjoy mainstream respect while amplifying narratives aligned with authoritarian regimes? And why are their elected members never pressed on it?

If this were a conservative group defending Pinochet or Franco, the outrage would be immediate.
Yet when it’s America’s left celebrating a reactionary theocrat, major media looks away.

A Movement Without Compasses

DSA’s internal messaging calls to “build a mass movement to end U.S. empire.”
That doesn’t mean reform. It means dismantling the structure of national power — the military, diplomatic, and economic systems that keep America afloat. That’s not anti-war. That’s anti-nation.

They say it out loud.
Husain closed the call with a vow: “We can end the U.S. empire here in America.”

Members cheered.

No one mentioned the Iranian teenagers executed for singing “Baraye.”
No one mentioned Nika Shakarami, the 16-year-old girl beaten to death by morality police.
No one mentioned the political prisoners begging the West not to forget them.

This is not solidarity. It’s betrayal dressed in protest slogans.

DSA leadership has yet to issue a statement clarifying its stance on Khamenei’s killing. It refused to respond to requests for comment from the New York Post. Mamdani’s office also stayed silent.

But silence speaks loudly. The American public deserves to know whether its elected officials condone mourning a regime that murdered women for dancing, hanged gay men from cranes, and armed militias across the Middle East.

The DSA cannot represent both American democracy and Islamist authoritarianism. It must choose.
So must its members in Congress and City Hall.

What It Means

This incident exposes a deeper fracture in American politics: the blurring line between dissent and disloyalty. Genuine opposition to endless wars does not require siding with dictators. But the activist left is crossing that line.

By rejecting any use of American power — even against tyrannies that crush their own — they transform into what they claim to fight: apologists for oppression.

If this is the moral compass guiding the next generation of “progressives,” expect more eulogies for despots, and more contempt for the country that gives them the freedom to speak.

If our leaders won’t answer questions about who they stand with, we must ask louder. Share this story, demand statements, and hold every official tied to DSA accountable for whose side they’re on.