Federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday revealed Iran’s lethal campaign to eliminate dissidents abroad, indicting the Iranian general Ruhollah Bazghandi in connection with the failed assassination attempt on the New York journalist and activist Masih Alinejad. According to prosecutors, six agents conducted extensive surveillance of Alinejad starting in July 2022 at the direction of BazghandI and Seyed Mohammad Forouzan, ialong with other conspirators among whom were Hossein Sedighi and an individual known only as “Haj Taher”.
On July 28, 2022, a member of an Eastern European criminal organization was arrested with a loaded AK-47 assault rifle and 66 rounds of ammunition approximately $1,100 in cash and a black balaclava, near the home of the prominent Iranian dissident in Brooklyn, New York. BazghandiForouzan and the other two men allegedly directed the murder-for-hire plot that led to the arrest. Bazghandi is a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and former head of a counterintelligence unit called IRGC-IO. The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury has designated Bazghandi twice for his alleged role in lethal targeting and assassination plots against enemies of Iran. The FBI has since issued a wanted notice for Bazghandi and his accomplices on charges of murder-for-hire and conspiracy.
Intercepted communications revealed their tracking efforts, with one stating, “I’m close to the place now, brother, I’m getting even closer,” and another replying, “OK, dear brother, don’t lose sight of her. Let us not delay, dear brother.” The general’s plan Bazghandi was foiled when authorities arrested one of the officers who was hiding near Alinejad’s residence in New York. «Thanks to the police, I am alive and witness the humiliation of the Islamic Republic. I am determined to echo the voices of millions of Iranians, especially women, who are facing the same killers inside the country. It is a stark reminder of the brutal lengths to which the Islamic regime is willing to go to silence dissidents, even those far beyond Iran’s borders,” Alinejad wrote on social media.
The director of the FBI Christopher Wray stated, “The FBI investigation led to the disruption of this plot as one of the conspirators was allegedly en route to kill the victim in New York. As these charges demonstrate, the FBI will work with our partners here and abroad to hold accountable those who target Americans.” As the New York Times writes, the indictment represents the latest move by the Department of Justice to counter the influence of foreign governments in the United States, also aimed at curbing intimidation operations on American soil and foiling assassination plots. Last week, federal prosecutors indicted an individual, identified as an Indian intelligence agent, accused of trying to organize a plot to kill a New York-based Sikh activist. Masih Alinejad for decades it has been a real thorn in the side of the Iranian theocratic regime, so much so that it even launched a campaign against the country’s mandatory laws on the hijab.
Masih Alinejad (Handle)
In a 2018 article in The New York Times, she detailed the reasons she was forced to flee her homeland in 2009 and how even though she remained out of reach of the regime, her family in Iran still pays the consequences: «The Ministry of Intelligence regularly sends officers to visit my elderly parents and at one point they offered to organize a family reunion in Turkey. I can only imagine what they have in mind for me.” In 2021, federal prosecutors declassified an indictment charging four Iranians with conspiring to kidnap Masih Alinejadafter luring her to a third country. The goal, according to the investigators, was ultimately to bring her to Iran. Prosecutors said one of the men, Alireza Shavaroghi Farahanian intelligence official, had hired private investigators through his network to monitor the Alinejad and members of his family. According to the prosecutors, the Iranian intelligence men “after kidnapping her wanted to transport the journalist out of the United States to transport her from New York to Venezuela, a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran.”
