For a new Q&A podcast with Masih Alinejad, go here. She had a bit of a cough. During our commercial break, I said, “Do you want a glass of water?” She said, “No, I survived two assassination plots. I can survive a half-hour without water.”
Masih is a U.S. citizen from Iran. She was expelled from her native country in 2009. She is a journalist and a human-rights activist. I first met her and podcasted with her last year. I wrote a piece about her called “A Free Spirit.”
Her autobiography — a page-turner — is called “The Wind in My Hair.” Now, she says, it’s more like “the hurricane in my hair.”
In 2021, the FBI foiled a kidnapping plot against her. It was a murder plot, really. Iranian agents planned to kidnap her from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y.; take her to Venezuela; and take her, finally, back to Iran. And in Iran? Death. Execution.
They’d done it before, to other troublesome exiles.
In recent weeks, the FBI has foiled another plot against Masih: a straight-up murder plot. She is now in a safehouse, unable to live at home. Unable to tend her garden, which she loves so much to do.
How does it feel? Can she possibly convey her feelings? Most of us will never be targeted for murder by a monstrous dictatorship. It’s shocking, says Masih. To see your name in the newspaper connected to the word “assassination” — shocking.
(By the way, my Q&A before the one with Masih was with John Bolton, the former national security adviser. He, too, has been targeted for murder by Iran. For our Q&A, go here.)
A gunman was lurking outside the door of Masih’s home. After his plans were frustrated, Masih was in a hotel room. She said to an FBI agent, “He was there to kill me?” “Yes,” replied the agent. Masih asked again: “He was there to kill me?” “Yes,” replied the agent. It is a hard thing to process, a hard thing to come to grips with.
Today, Masih wonders: Will I survive a third attempt?
“I’m not saying I’m not scared,” Masih tells me. “But at the end of the day, I don’t want to live in fear, I don’t want to live in paranoia. I really want to enjoy my life. I want to dance in the streets. I want to hug people. This is my character.”
I can vouch for that, and so can everyone who knows her.
Says Masih, “I am very thankful that the FBI is protecting me. My home country, Iran, wants to kill me. But my adopted country? They are protecting me. I’m so proud of being an American citizen.”
In our country, you can criticize law enforcement — condemn law enforcement — and be protected by law enforcement nonetheless. Masih marvels at this, as do many others with experience under dictatorships. Some of my friends speak of abolishing the FBI. Okay. But one thing I say in response is, “The FBI uncovered assassination plots against my friends Masih Alinejad and John Bolton. Who is going to do that, once you abolish the FBI? Some other agency of your creating? There had better be something.”
Masih is not very interested in battles between Republicans and Democrats. “When it comes to killing people, dictators don’t care whether Trump is in power or Biden is in power,” she says. “Dictators hate America. The Taliban, the Islamic Republic [of Iran], ISIS: They hate democracy.”
As Masih sees it, terrorists and dictators unite more easily than democrats. “If you don’t get united to end terrorism, believe me, terrorists will get united to end democracy.”
She is very pleased that Republicans and Democrats have come together to sponsor the Masih Alinejad HUNT Act of 2021. The acronym stands for “Harassment and Unlawful Targeting.” The purpose of the bill? I will quote official language: “to identify and impose sanctions with respect to persons who are responsible for or complicit in abuses toward dissidents on behalf of the Government of Iran.”
Masih is tickled pink that her name is on a piece of American legislation. Back in Iran, she was a parliamentary reporter. The parliamentarians banned her, for exposing corruption. In America, for the same work, she would have received awards. But in Iran?
Here is a painful subject (another one): Not all Iranian exiles are anti-regime, anti-dictatorship. Far from it. The same is true of Chinese exiles and Russian exiles. It is a maddening thing, certainly to me: People enjoying freedom in Western democracies support or defend the dictatorships in their native lands.
Why don’t they go back and live under those dictatorships?
Masih mentions what she calls a “smear campaign” against her by a coalition that includes the National Iranian American Council, the Quincy Institute, and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. For an article on this subject, published by Al Arabiya in January 2020, go here.
Impassioned (as usual), Masih challenges Congresswoman Omar in particular to meet her face to face. Then they would discuss the rights of people — especially women — in countries such as Iran. I, for one, would like to be a fly on that wall.
Another of our subjects: Salman Rushdie, recently attacked (physically). Masih has never met him, but would like to. She would tell him this: “Forgive me. When I was a teenager, I hated you, because my government brainwashed me. But then you became my hero.”
In our podcast, Masih speaks of her parents. She has not seen her family in Iran for 13 years. The Iranian government forbids it. Her mother has a beautiful singing voice, says Masih. But she was never able to sing in public. She wanted Masih to have a different life. She did not want her daughter to be a victim, in a village, with her fate determined by others. She wanted her daughter to walk her own path, and to be free and warrior-like.
Masih says that her mother is a “tiny” woman who can neither read nor write. Yet she in her own way is warrior-like. She in her own way has an independence of mind.
What about Masih’s father? He is a street peddler, selling ducks and chickens, along with the vegetables that Masih’s mother grows in her garden. He is a hard-liner. “I don’t believe in my daughter,” he tells people. And yet there is reason to believe that he does, and is proud of her. Proud in his own way.
“They can kill me,” Masih says of the Iranian government, “but they can’t kill an idea.” They can’t kill ideas of freedom, democracy, and human dignity. If it takes her death to unite people in democracies against dictators and terrorists, “come and kill me,” says Masih.
To which I say: We’re better off with you alive.
The rulers of Iran have “bombs, guns, power,” says Masih, and yet “they are scared of me.” They seem to be, yes. Masih has some 9 million followers on social media — more than the ayatollahs, as she points out. Iran’s rulers “want us to lose hope,” she says, “but we won’t lose hope, and that kills the regime.”
Again, to listen to this remarkable woman, in our latest podcast, go here.