Iranian American: 'Badge of Honor' to Have Same Alleged Assassin as Trump

By Gabe Whisnant

Masih Alinejad, a prominent Iranian American human rights activist and journalist, said on Saturday that it is a "badge of honor" to have the same alleged attempted assassins as President-elect Donald Trump.

On Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges against 51-year-old Farhad Shakeri who is believed to be in Tehran, Iran, in an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump and a number of others, including Alinejad, two Jewish-American businesspeople and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.

Shakeri told law enforcement that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—a paramilitary that the U.S. deems a terrorist organization—tasked him on October 7 with "providing a plan to kill" Trump, according to a press release issued by the DOJ on Friday.

"Shakeri claimed he did not intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within the timeframe set by the IRGC," the release read.

Trump's communications director, Steven Cheung, told Newsweek via email Friday afternoon, "President-Elect Trump is aware of the attempted assassination plot by the Iranian terrorist regime. Nothing will deter President Trump from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world."

Meanwhile, Carlisle Rivera, a 49-year-old from Brooklyn, New York, and 36-year-old Jonathon Loadholt, from Staten Island, New York, were arrested in the scheme on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill Alinejad who has endured multiple Iranian murder-for-hire plots foiled by law enforcement.

The DOJ unsealed these charges Friday, revealing the details of the complex, international conspiracy.

Alinejad was in Berlin on Saturday to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In an interview with the Associated Press, she said that despite the shocking news, she feels more determined than ever to continue championing women's rights in Iran.

"They want to get rid of me. When they want me dead, it means that I'm doing something. I'm hurting them so bad," Alinejad, 48, said, referring to the Iranian government. "I'm echoing the voice of powerful women and that scares them."

She continued: "It's scary. But at the same time, I was very pleased that the U.S. law enforcement is protecting me. The same person who was trying to kill President Trump was assigned to kill me as well. I mean, that's a badge of honor."

Newsweek has reached out to Alinejad via email Saturday via My Stealthy Freedom, a campaign Alinejad launched in 2014 against compulsory hijab, for additional comment.

Esmail Baghaei, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, rejected the DOJ report and called it a plot by Israel-linked circles to make Iran-U.S. relations more complicated, the AP reported via the official IRNA news agency.

In response to previous allegations of an Iran-linked assassination plot against Trump uncovered by media reports in July, the Iranian Mission previously told Newsweek "these accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious."

The Iranian Mission added: "From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General [Qasem] Soleiman. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice."

Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.

Alinejad is known for her outspoken criticism of the Iranian government and has been working as a contractor for the U.S.-funded Voice of America's Farsi-language network since 2015. She fled Iran following the disputed 2009 presidential election and was granted U.S. citizenship in October 2019.

This is not the first time Alinejad has been targeted. In 2020 and 2021, prosecutors charged a group allegedly working for Iranian intelligence with plans to kidnap her. In 2023, authorities announced that three men were arrested in connection to her alleged assassination.

As part of the evidence unsealed Friday, the DOJ alleges that Rivera and Loadholt spent months conducting surveillance on Alinejad and, during their efforts to locate and kill her, shared messages about their progress and photographs.

Around February, they traveled to Fairfield University in Connecticut, where Alinejad was scheduled to appear and took photos of the campus. Around April, Shakeri sent Rivera a series of voice notes discussing their efforts to locate and kill her, the DOJ said in a statement.

The AP reported that Alinejad raised her hand in a defiant fist repeatedly during Saturday's interview at a Berlin hotel cafe, which was conducted with three German government bodyguards assigned to protect her.

She also raised her voice and sang loudly in Farsi during the interview.

"I blossom through my wounds and my scars," she translates the lyrics as. "Because I am a woman. I am a woman. I am a woman."