Iranian-American journalist vows to continue work after staggering kidnap plot revealed: ‘I will not stop’

An Iranian-American journalist who was allegedly the target of a wild, elaborate plot by Iran to use a speedboat to kidnap her in New York City, has vowed she will not be silenced.

Federal prosecutors said they had charged four Iranians with plotting to kidnap journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who lives in Brooklyn and is an outspoken critic of the Iranian government. An American-Iranian who lives in California was arrested earlier this month and charged with providing funds to the plot.

An indictment released by prosecutors said four named Iranian agents had hired a New York-based private investigator, under false pretences, to film Ms Alinejad and other family. They said they also researched the option of spiriting her away from the city on a speedboat, and possibly taking her to Venezuela, a nation with friendly relations with Iran.

Ms Alinejad said she would not let the plot silence or intimidate her.

“The Republic is that close to me – even here in Brooklyn,” she said, speaking to CBS News. “And this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, kidnapping the dissidents and executing them.”

Yet, she said she would not stop her work, which draws an enormous audience on social media.

Asked if she was going to continue writing, she said: “Oh yeah, I am not going to give up.”

Indeed, she suggested the fact that the authorities were keen to silence her, shows “the government in Iran is scared of me”. She added: “It gives me hope that the government is scared of the voice of people, because I’m the voice of people.”

Prosecutors said the plot to snatch Ms Alinejad was part of a broader scheme to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom, along with individuals in the United Arab Emirates, to Iran.

It said the idea of using a speedboat only was raised after efforts to persuade Ms Alinejad to trick her to visit a third country, in the Middle East, had failed.

Even investigators appeared to concede there was something of a fantastical element to the plot, with William Sweeney, the head of New York’s FBI office, telling The Guardian that the charges had the ring of “some far-fetched movie plot”.

Indeed, while Iran has in recent years been successful in luring back dissidents to the region where they have been seized and taken back to Tehran, they have not carried out such plots in Europe or the US.

Experts pointed out Iran has only a very small number of diplomats operating in the US - UN representatives based in New York. Some also pointed out the difficulty of transporting someone by speedboat from New York to Venezuela - a distance of more than 2,100 miles, and an eight-hour journey by flight.

At the White House, the president’s spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said Iran’s alleged plans were “dangerous and despicable”

“We categorically condemn Iran’s dangerous and despicable reported plot to kidnap a U.S. citizen on US soil,” she said.

In Tehran, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said the accusations were “baseless and ridiculous.”

“Making such an imaginary story is not unlikely by the US. Its entire short history is full of assassination, kidnapping and sabotage in other countries,” said Mr Khatibzadeh.

In 2019, Ruhollah Zam, a 42-year-old dissident writer who fled Iran in 2011, was lured from his exiled home in France to Iraq, where he was arrested by Iraqi police and handed to the Iranians. He was convicted without any evidence and then put to death in December 2020.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 2020, another Iranian-American, Jamshid Sharmahd, who acted as a spokesman for a militant Iranian opposition group, was tricked to visit Dubai where he was kidnapped by Iranian agents. He is still in jail in Iran after being forced to make a confession on video.

At the time of his arrest, his son, Shayan Sharmahd, told the Associated Press his family was seeking help from the international community.

He said: “We’re seeking support from any democratic country, any free country. You can’t just pick someone up in a third country and drag them into your country.”

Additional reporting by agencies