For exercising my freedom as a U.S. citizen and criticizing the regime, my life and family are at risk.
By Masih Alinejad Aug. 7, 2022
Masih Alinejad said this security-camera photo shows defendant Khalid Mehdiyev outside her Brooklyn home Brooklyn, N.Y. “This time their objective was to kill you,” a special agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation told me. “We detained him with a loaded AK-47.” When I saw the photos of the weapon, I was filled with shock, fear and disbelief.
In 2014 I launched a campaign challenging compulsory hijab in my native Iran. For defending a woman’s right to dress how she wants and my endless criticism of the regime, I have been targeted multiple times by the Iranian government on American soil.
Video security footage at my home showed a man on my porch last week trying to break in. While he was outside my door, I was on a video call with Human Rights Foundation chairman Garry Kasparov and Venezuelan activist Leopoldo López. We were discussing how last month both Vladimir Putin and Nicolás Maduro were in Iran, and that just as the dictators are united, so should be the efforts against their regimes. According to an affidavit from the FBI, the Iranian agent who attempted to enter my home is Khalid Mehdiyev, an Azerbaijan-born immigrant to the U.S. New York police arrested him on Thursday and, after searching his car, they found the loaded AK-47, 66 rounds of ammunition, more than $1,000 in cash, and multiple fraudulent license plates from various U.S. states. President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has confirmed that the Iranian regime sent Mr. Mehdiyev to assassinate me.
Tehran is deathly afraid of my message and its strength inside Iran. For months last year, I had to move between multiple safe houses after the FBI foiled a plot by Iranian agents to kidnap me from my home in New York and forcibly return me to Iran by way of Venezuela. I am routinely harassed online and accounts try to impersonate me to discredit my message. Earlier this month my social-media accounts were fraudulently suspended. The regime has gone after my family in Iran, trying to use my mother to lure me back to the country.
Though my family and I are again being uprooted from our home to go into hiding, the Iranian regime’s attempts to silence me will never work. I am not fearful of dying, because I know what I am living for. I have dedicated my life to fighting for those in my country who bravely risk everything to challenge the dictatorship.
Iran continues to deny all of this, but it’s the truth.
The regime is my only enemy, the only entity interested in kidnapping or killing me. It has already harassed my family in Iran, put my sister on national TV to denounce me, and jailed my brother for two years. It is no surprise that a ruthless tyranny would want to repress innocent activists, but it is shocking it would twice attempt to commit crimes against someone in America. For daring to enjoy my freedom and give a voice to the countless Iranians who can’t speak freely, I am unable to live in peace or security even in the U.S.
Tehran is unlikely to stop. Regime officials are humiliated that this latest foiled plot makes the regime look like a bumbling failure. Perhaps they will be emboldened to finish what they started. I am grateful for the protection of law-enforcement agencies, and I hope the U.S. government takes this seriously and makes clear to the mullahs that an American citizen like me should feel safe exercising her constitutional freedoms inside U.S. borders.
Ms. Alinejad is a member of the Human Rights Foundation’s international council and author of “The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran.”