Iran's plot to kidnap a dissident in New York is a warning to Biden
A host of authoritarian regimes have tried to silence exiled dissidents and other foreign critics in recent years with tactics ranging from holding family members hostage to kidnapping and murder. Russia’s Vladimir Putin may be the most prolific, with multiple assassinations and poisonings on his account; Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman the most brazen, having dispatched a team to butcher journalist and Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi with a bone saw inside one of the kingdom’s own foreign consulates. Iran, however, may be the only regime that recently has plotted to physically assault an opponent on U.S. territory. Fortunately, the enterprise failed — but it ought to serve as a warning to the Biden administration.
Federal prosecutors charged four Iranians this week with conspiring to kidnap one of the country’s most courageous and influential dissidents — Masih Alinejad, who from a base in Brooklyn has inspired countless women to defy the regime’s restrictions on dress, speech and political activity. With more than 5 million followers on social media and a weekly television program on the Voice of America’s Persian service, Ms. Alinejad has shown she can create movements inside Iran — such as the White Wednesdays protests, in which women photographed themselves removing their headscarves. The regime tried to silence her with death threats and pressure on her family: Her sister was forced to denounce her on state television, and her brother, though not himself an activist, was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison. According to U.S. prosecutors, security forces tried to bribe other relatives to lure Ms. Alinejad to travel to a place where she could be abducted — a tactic they used to capture two other exiled dissidents, one of whom was later executed.
When all of this failed, intelligence agents began working on a scheme to capture Ms. Alinejad in Brooklyn, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan. Like the plot Tehran concocted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington a decade ago, the abduction plan was wildly audacious: Apparently Ms. Alinejad was to be spirited to the Brooklyn waterfront and transported by boat to Venezuela, whose regime has become a close Iranian ally. “This is not some far-fetched movie plot,” said William F. Sweeney Jr., the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office; the Iranians hired private investigators to surveil Ms. Alinejad and her household.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/15/irans-plot-kidnap-dissident-new-york-is-warning-biden/
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