Would-be murderer of Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad to be sentenced in Manhattan

iranian dissident Masih Alinejad has survived Three plots of the Iranian regime kill her or kidnap her. She will face one of the men involved in a murder-for-hire plot at her sentencing in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday.

“Now I am going to face the murderer, my possible murderer,” said Alinejad, a critic of Iran’s repression of women. “But, in my opinion, the main killer is the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).”

It is the second time Alinejad will face a man accused of plotting to murder her over the past year. Two men, who prosecutors said were members of a Russian mafia hired by Iran, received 25-year prison sentences in October for trying to kill Alinejad in her Brooklyn home.

“The IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, is behind the assassination plots. The same IRGC that is ordering a massacre right now in Iran,” he said. “I have been bombarded by Iranians receiving videos showing the IRGC using AK-47 military weapons to kill people. The IRGC itself gave money to the murderers here to buy AK-47s and end my life.”

Prosecutors said Farhad Shakeri, an Iranian agent, “was tasked by the regime to run a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets.”

Prosecutors alleged that in the last attempt, Shakeri ordered two criminal associates in New York, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, to murder Alinejad.

That attempt was scheduled to take place in February 2024 at Fairfield University in Connecticut, where Alinejad gave a speech.

After months of surveillance, their plot was foiled. Rivera and Loadholt were arrested in November 2024 and pleaded guilty before the case could go to trial.

Rivera, who will be sentenced Wednesday, faces a maximum of ten years in prison for conspiring to commit murder for hire. Loadholt’s sentencing is scheduled for April 23. Shakeri is believed to be in Iran.

Federal authorities said Shakeri told them that the IRGC had also assigned him to organize the assassination of President Trump before the 2024 election.

When she learned that the same man had planned to kill her and Mr. Trump, Alinejad “laughed out loud” and told her husband: “Wow, they think I’m as powerful as President Trump. I’m just a 105-pound woman. I have no army, no guns, no soldiers, nothing. Just my voice. My weapon is my voice.”

At the same time, Alinejad said she felt scared and recalled how for years the Iranian regime said the United States is the “great Satan” and “Iran’s greatest enemy.”

“The same group that attacked President Trump wanted to attack me,” he said. “It means that now, in his eyes, I am the great Satan. I am his greatest enemy.”

Alinejad is a journalist and leader of a movement to free Iranian women from the mandatory hijab. He fled Iran in 2009 and settled in the United States.

She alleges that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered her assassination, pointing to a speech in which he refers to an “American agent” who had compared the mandatory hijab to the Berlin Wall. Alinejad had already made that same comparison before.

Alinejad said that the day before her speech at Fairfield University, the FBI came to her home to warn her about an imminent threat. The agents took her to a safe house. The university canceled the event.

“I want to confront him and say: Did you really want to shoot up a university? How many innocent students could you have killed?” said of Rivera’s sentencing.

Alinejad sees her mission as exposing the situation in Iran and giving a voice to the victims, but she worries that the attacks on her life will make her afraid to invite her to speak.

“By sending assassins to the United States, they are not just targeting me. They are targeting freedom of speech in the United States,” he said. “They are trying to cover up their massacre.”

“I am very grateful to the United States for bringing my would-be killers to justice,” Alinejad added. “But I want the biggest sponsor of terrorism, Ali Khamenei, who ordered my assassination and now ordered the massacre in Iran, to be held accountable to the United States of America.”

— Masih Alinejad is a News themezone contributor