In March 2025, I will confront the man who came to my Brooklyn home armed with an AK-47 to kill me. I will be testifying as a witness not just against the trigger man but also his handlers who orchestrated the assassination plot from an office at the headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. My story, while deeply personal, is also part of a broader, sinister pattern of transnational repression in which authoritarian regimes like those in Iran, Russia, China, and Venezuela extend their oppressive reach beyond their borders to target political dissidents. Even American citizens on U.S. soil are not safe when the world’s leading sponsors of terror act with impunity.
Plots like the one recently uncovered involving a man with ties to the Iranian regime who came to the United States to coordinate the assassination of U.S. government officials are in the news for good reason. But there is a quieter aggression against people who do not have the resources to defend themselves or the ability to draw media attention to their dire situations.
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