Halifax, Canada — Iranian agents have twice, since 2021, plotted to kidnap or murder dissident journalist Masih Alinejad at her home in Brooklyn, according to Justice Department court documents.
But when CBS’s 60 Minutes recently highlighted Tehran’s growing terrorist threats on U.S. soil, including the plots targeting Alinejad, one important voice was missing: that of the Biden administration’s, which declined to make any officials available for an interview on the topic. Alinejad noticed.
In an interview with National Review on Saturday, on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, she called the administration’s non-response to 60 Minutes “very irresponsible.”
“To me, it’s going to embolden the Iranian regime more. The Islamic Republic is actually challenging the Biden administration, the U.S. government, on U.S. soil,” she said of the White House’s refusal to have an official to appear on the CBS program, adding that the Biden administration needs to be tough on terror.
The program did speak to people at the FBI and other agencies, who revealed that Iranian assassination plots are getting “more frequent and bolder.” In addition to Alinejad, the regime hired a hitman to surveil and murder former national-security adviser John Bolton and to target other former senior officials.
The high-profile confab in Halifax convenes government officials, top military brass, and pro-democracy figures from the U.S. and like-minded countries around the globe every year. Most official programming concerned Ukraine, but attendees were also laser-focused on the loose but growing alignment between Russia, China, and Iran. That growing authoritarian axis was the topic of a panel on the first night of the gathering.
Officials at Halifax noted that the Iranian terrorist threat isn’t unique to the U.S.: The U.K.’s police and MI5 intelligence service said in February that it had disrupted 15 similar schemes targeting people in the country. And in May, the authorities there shut down an Islamic cultural center that was allegedly funded and controlled by people in the Ayatollah Khamenei’s orbit.
Alicia Kearns, the U.K. parliament member who chairs its foreign-affairs committee, told National Review yesterday that Americans should assume that the Iranian regime has a similar presence in America: “If you’ve got a model that works, that allows you an operating base from which to recruit — are they useful idiots or actual activists that are helping you achieve your aims, or worse, potential assassins? Why would you not roll that out around the world, especially in the U.S.?”
The White House has previously condemned Iranian assassination plots, and National-Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Alinejad after the first one came to light in 2021. But this clearly hasn’t stopped her from criticizing the administration’s handling of Iran. The U.S. has waived sanctions, possibly leading to the release of billions of dollars in previously frozen funds for humanitarian purposes — which critics argue will free up funds for Iran to further support terrorist activities.
Alinejad said she believes that “Americans will face more assassins, more criminals being hired by the Islamic Republic to kill or harm American dissidents on U.S. soil,” and she called on the U.S. to criminalize Iran’s transnational repression.
“Being politically correct, in the face of a government which is not correct, and willing to destroy democracy, willing to kill Americans, kill everyone who dares to challenge them — it’s wrong.”