Carlisle Rivera, the operative involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American journalist, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The New York Times, citing the U.S. Department of Justice, reported that Carlisle Rivera was convicted of participating in a “murder-for-hire” scheme targeting Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and critic of the Iranian government. The U.S. judicial authorities have attributed the orchestration of this assassination plot to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In 2024, the IRGC—through an intermediary—offered Rivera $100,000 to carry out the murder of this outspoken opponent of the Iranian regime.
This is not the first time that Iranian journalists and dissidents living in exile have faced threats, assassination attempts, or physical attacks outside Iran. Numerous cases have been documented in which Iranian reporters and activists have been targeted by threats, stabbing attacks, or elaborate murder plots.
According to the annual report by the DeFFI organization, Iranian journalists and media outlets are currently enduring an unprecedented wave of security pressures, judicial prosecutions, and deliberate interference in their professional activities. The organization has described this situation as a “militarized campaign against the free flow of information.” In 2025, transnational threats by the Islamic Republic against Iranian journalists abroad reached an all-time high, taking on deeply alarming dimensions. During this period, multiple instances of arrests, threats, harassment, and targeted restrictions against the families of Iranian journalists living overseas were recorded.