New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani seemed to shy away on Monday from a campaign vow — referenced in an interview over the weekend — to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he continued to lob rhetorical fusillades at the leader of the Jewish state.

The now-mayor promised to arrest Netanyahu in the early days of his run for Gracie Mansion, as he sought to consolidate the far left behind his then-longshot bid, and reiterated the promise after winning the Democratic primary. 

“My administration will follow all applicable local laws," Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters about arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — what legal experts and Gov. Kathy Hochul say is outside the NYPD's powers.

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Legal experts and even Gov. Kathy Hochul have asserted this lies outside the powers of the NYPD. But the democratic socialist maintained in a weekend interview with The New York Times that an “active conversation” remained ongoing in the city’s law department about his ability to enforce a warrant from the International Criminal Court — of which the U.S. is not a member — to take the Israeli prime minister into custody if he comes to New York for the upcoming U.N. General Assembly meeting.

But Mamdani seemed to acknowledge on Monday that such a move might exceed his authority.

“My administration will follow all applicable local laws, that is our commitment, that is something will follow through on, when it comes to adherence to local laws,” the mayor told reporters after an unrelated event, stressing again when pressed: “We will follow our local laws.”

“I believe that when someone is charged with an International Criminal Court warrant, it’s something that should be taken seriously, whether it’s Benjamin Netanyahu or it’s [Russian President] Vladimir Putin or whomever else,” the mayor said.

Nonetheless, the mayor criticized Netanyahu as the “architect of the genocide of Palestinians” and affirmed his earlier assertion that the Israeli leader is a “war criminal.” 

President Donald Trump, for his part, took to Truth Social after Mamdani’s sitdown with the Times to promise that Netanyahu “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”