As it turned out, that man was a would-be assassin named Khalid Mehdiyev, and Alinejad was the target of an extraordinary plot to kill her and silence a powerful voice of opposition to the Tehran regime.

Federal prosecutors showed how Mehdiyev was supposed to be the triggerman in an international murder plot involving the Iranian government and Russian mobsters named Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov. Iranian officials hired Amirov and Omarov to kill Alinejad in the US for $500,000 after previous plots failed, prosecutors said.

The Iranian regime wanted to assassinate Alinejad due to her advocacy for women’s rights and freedom. She had left Iran in 2009 following the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election and moved to the US, where she launched online campaigns for women’s rights and worked as a journalist, author and fierce critic of the Iranian government.