U.S.-Iran Kidnap Plot: Why Is Iran Attempting To Silence Masih Alinejad?

By Golnaz Esfandiari

Masih Alinejad’s harsh criticism of Iran’s clerical establishment, her campaign against the compulsory hijab, and efforts to highlight Tehran's rights abuses, have angered Iranian officials who have tried to silence her through intimidation, smearing her name, and pressuring her family.

But an alleged plot to kidnap Alinejad -- an activist and journalist who hosts a weekly television show on the Voice of America's Persian Service -- appears to be the latest action against her.

The U.S Justice Department said on July 13 that an Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged member of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged with conspiring to lure a New York-based journalist to a third country and forcibly return her to Iran.

Alinejad, who left Iran in 2009 and has been living in the United States since 2014, confirmed she is the journalist in the indictment, saying on Twitter that she’s grateful to the FBI for foiling the plot.

The four also allegedly plotted to lure a person living in Britain and three others in Canada to Iran, according to the indictment. The identities of those targeted have not been made public.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry rejected as “ridiculous and baseless” the Justice Department claim about Tehran’s involvement in a kidnapping plot. "This is not the first time that the United States has undertaken such Hollywood scenarios," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on July 14.

Alinejad -- who is a former contributor to RFE/RL's Radio Farda -- told RFE/RL in a statement that she believes she was targeted for her human rights efforts, while adding that she will not give up her activism.

“As an Iranian journalist and activist, my crime is to give voice to the mothers whose children were killed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. To women who have had enough of the institutionalized gender apartheid. To minorities who are discriminated against. But this is enough to petrify the Islamic republic,” she said.

The 44-year-old Alinejad -- who has scores of fans and hardcore supporters as well as her critics -- has challenged Iranian officials from her home in Brooklyn while highlighting some aspects of life under Iran’s repressive establishment.

Once employed as a parliamentary reporter in Tehran, Alinejad has used social media to bring attention to the harassment of women that are deemed by morality police and vigilantes to be insufficiently covered by posting videos of the incidents.

Alinejad has more than 5 million followers on Instagram alone.

She has also conducted interviews with victims of state repression, including mothers who lost their children in Iran’s brutal November 2019 crackdown on antiestablishment protests that left at least 300 dead, according to Amnesty International, and shares them with her millions of followers.

Gisou Nia, a human rights lawyer and the head of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council, told RFE/RL that Alinejad has been targeted by Tehran due to her "ability to mobilize the public."

“There are many critics of the Islamic republic abroad, but few have the capacity to inspire people-led action on the street the way that Masih [Alinejad] and her ideas have,” Nia said.

In 2014, Alinejad created a Facebook page called My Stealthy Freedom, where dozens of women posted photos of themselves without the Islamic hijab that became compulsory following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian women have increasingly defied the hijab rule over the years by wearing small head scarves and short coats or by showing more of their hair.

Alinejad is also the founder of the White Wednesdays campaign that encourages Iranian women to publicly protest against the forced hijab rule and post online videos of their demonstrations.

Several women who participated in Alinejad’s campaign have been jailed in Iran. The campaign is believed to have inspired some of the women who removed their head scarves on the streets of Tehran and other cities in 2018, defiantly flouting the compulsory hijab rule.