An agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps charged in an alleged plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump before this year's election has been connected to a failed assassination attempt against a New York City journalist and critic of Iran.
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American author and outspoken critic of the Islamic regime's human rights abuses, especially its treatment of women, said in a video posted Friday on her X account that FBI agents informed her the alleged assassins planned to murder her, the New York Post reported.
"Whatever I do hurts them so bad they want to kill me," she said in the video. "That makes me more determined to give voice to Iranian women, Iranian men, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder to bring the dictatorship down."
Iranian asset Farhad Shakeri, 51; Carlisle "Pop" Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn; and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island were charged in what prosecutors described in the indictment as a network of criminal associates tasked by Iran to further assassination plots on targets, including Trump and Alinejad. The three were each charged with murder-for-hire and other related crimes.
Rivera and Loadholt were arrested and appeared in Manhattan federal court Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported, and ordered to be detained until trial.
Shakeri remains at large in Iran. An Afghan national, he immigrated to the U.S. as a child and was deported in 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for robbery.
This is not the first time Alinejad has been the focus of an Iranian assassination plot.
Three members of an Eastern European crime syndicate were charged last year with money laundering and murder for hire, according to a criminal indictment. They were members of an Eastern European group that calls its followers Thieves-in-Law and were paid by the Iranian government.
That alleged plot began to unravel after Khalid Mehdiyev of New York was arrested in 2022 when he was found driving around Alinejad's home in Brooklyn with a loaded AK-47 rifle and dozens of rounds of ammunition. Prosecutors said he was sent there by Rafat Amirov of Iran and Polad Omarov of the Czech Republic.
Amirov and Omarov allegedly had arranged to pay Mehdiyev $30,000 to buy the rifle and kill Alinejad. Mehdiyev staked out her home several times, taking photos and videos, according to the indictment.
Iranian agents were indicted for plotting to assassinate Trump in the final weeks of this year's presidential campaign, the Post reported. Shakeri tasked the New Yorkers with killing Alinejad, whom they stalked for nine months, according to that indictment.
In a voice message to Shakeri, according to the indictment, Rivera said, among other things, "this b**** is hard to catch, bro. And because she hard to catch, there ain't gonna be no simple pull-up ... Unless there's the luck of the draw."
Alinejad said in the video the FBI warned her not to attend a scheduled appearance in February at Fairfield University in Connecticut but did not describe details of the threat. The event was canceled.
The indictment said that Rivera and Loadholt were planning to be at the university only for surveillance, and in April and July, Rivera and Shakeri discussed a $100,000 payment to "finish the job."
Investigators learned of the plots against Trump and Alinejad in a series of voluntary telephone interviews with Shakeri between late September and early November, according to the indictment.
Shakeri said he was in Tehran and agreed to be interviewed to get a reduced sentence for another federal defendant in a U.S. prison. Shakeri told agents the IRGC would pay approximately $1.5 million to have Alinejad killed and that it wanted her killed immediately, "nighttime, daytime, anywhere."