US charges Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in failed plot to kill human rights activist

The News

US prosecutors charged a senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, along with three other men Tuesday, in connection with a 2022 failed plot to assassinate a New York-based human rights activist Masih Alinejad.

It is the first time that US authorities have directly tied an official of the Revolutionary Guards — Tehran’s primary military force — to the failed plot, The New York Times reported. Prosecutors previously issued murder-for-hire charges against Eastern European gang members with ties to Iran who were allegedly tasked with the assassination.

The IRGC member, Ruhollah Bazghandi, was identified by the US Treasury last year as a counterintelligence official and is facing sanctions for previous roles in assassination plots against journalists, Israeli citizens, and other people deemed enemies of Iran.

Alinejad on Tuesday told the Times the new indictment is significant because Tehran uses gangs “to get away from punishment, to get away from accountability.”

The Iranian-American journalist and activist has been exiled from Iran since 2009 for criticizing its restrictions against women, making her a target of the regime’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Women of Iran are his biggest enemy,” Alinejad told Time magazine in a 2023 interview. “He’s scared of us more than anything.”