The Trump administration threw cold water on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s dream of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling the proposal “pure political theater.”
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz responded on Saturday after Mamdani revealed he was in “active conversation” with New York City’s Law Department over whether he could order Netanyahu’s arrest if the Israeli leader visits New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September.
“Mayor Mamdani: here’s why your threat to arrest PM Netanyahu in NYC during UNGA is not going to happen,” Waltz wrote on X. He went on to elaborate that the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), the U.N. Headquarters Agreement grants diplomatic protections to visiting heads of government, longstanding head-of-state immunity applies, and “federal authority trumps any local mayor’s wishes.”
“This is pure political theater,” Waltz concluded.
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