Inside the Conviction of Iran’s Would-Be Assassins in New York

On Thursday, after deliberating for less than four hours, a federal jury returned guilty verdicts against two Eastern European self-described gangsters hired by Iran to send a hit man to kill an Iranian dissident at her Brooklyn home. The intended victim, Masih Alinejad, is a journalist and activist with nearly 9 million Instagram followers and the personal enmity of Iran’s Supreme Leader, who calls her “the American agent.”

The July 2022 plot was at least the third attempt on Alinejad’s life by Iran, and the trial marked the first time the regime’s assassination apparatus was laid out in detail in a U.S. courtroom. Until the United States v. Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, the Justice Department had issued indictments against Iranian officials that described their alleged efforts to assassinate U.S. officials—including Donald Trump and John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor in his first term. But on the 24th floor of a lower Manhattan U.S. District courthouse, a string of FBI agents filled in the nitty gritty—detailing the forensic penetration of iPhones, Google accounts, WhatsApp messages, and search histories of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives hunting Alinejad.

Through a Google account opened in the name “Alex Peterson,” evidence showed, Brig. Gen. Ruhollah Bazghandi repeatedly searched “Masih Alinejad arrests” and “Masih Alinejad kidnapping plot.” (Iran had plotted to abduct Alinejad in 2020, the U.S. charged in an earlier indictment.) The general also searched his own name and, 93 times in a span of 18 months, looked up “US sanctions on IRGC intelligence officers,” of which he is the subject.

Other Iranian intelligence operatives repeatedly searched “Rafat the thief”—the nickname of Amirov, who resided in Iran at the time and according to prosecutors, was the mob’s point of contact for Iranian intelligence. (Amirov photos, ID cards, and airline tickets were found on an Iranian operative’s phone.) It was unclear how much of the $500,000 Iran had promised for killing Alinejad had been transferred to the mobsters. But after their hitman was arrested near her house on July 28, 2022, with an assault rifle and a ski mask, the Iranians wanted it back.

“This is addressed to you, your boss and mafia,” read a text message to the operative handling Amirov’s gang, dated Oct. 4, a Tuesday. “If the job gets no result by Saturday, there will be nothing left to say between us, and you will lose the job. Additionally, you must return the deposit or else you will have to face the consequences. Until Saturday then.”

All the telltale data was harvested from phones confiscated when the mobsters were arrested or handed over by U.S.-based internet companies that responded to FBI search warrants. (In the digital realm, American law enforcement enjoys home-field advantage.) In the courtroom, the cumulative effect proved overwhelming. In closing arguments, Amirov’s lawyer acknowledged that the government’s digital narrative “points in my client’s general direction,” and could only argue that no evidence proved it was Amirov’s thumbs that sent the more damaging texts. He also pointed to what he described as gaps in the prosecutor’s technical case.

But just as the gangsters put their faith in the would-be hitman to carry out the plot, their lawyers turned to him for a defense.

Khalid Mehdiyev, 27, testified for the government. “I was there to try to kill the journalist,” he announced on the stand, then spent hours cheerfully acknowledging the criminal implications of the messages and images on his phone, including a distinctive screenshot of Alinejad’s address that also was on the phone of an Iranian operative.

But Mehdiyev, a hulking presence referred to as “the fat one” in his bosses’ messages, also proved useful to defense lawyers. They pointed out that he had incentive to accommodate the FBI, which had relocated his family to the U.S. from his native Azerbaijan and offered what Omarov’s attorney called “the golden ticket” of remaining in the U.S. after serving a reduced sentence. That attorney, Elena Fast, devoted her entire closing argument to the former pizza delivery driver, who claimed to have testified truthfully about the plot but acknowledged lying about everything from the facts of his visa application to whether his mother was alive (she is, and testified that she’d been threatened by Omarov; Fast told jurors she should have won an Oscar).

Fast argued that Omarov and Mehdiyev, after divvying up a $30,000 advance from Iran, never intended to kill Ahlinejad. “This was a scam,” she said. “They wanted to make some money here—scamming the Iranians, scamming Amirov.

Alinejad testified to a packed courtroom on Wednesday. Since moving to the U.S. in 2009, the journalist has emerged as a prominent dissident, with a large following inside Iran, especially among young women who understand the regime’s enforcement of compulsory hijab, or modest dress, as shorthand for all its misogynist laws. Iran’s most recent attempt on her was in 2024, when, according to a U.S. indictment, Iran engaged an Afghan to arrange the assassination of both her and Trump.

“They wanted Ms. Alinejad dead, not in the witness box,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Lockard.

Appearing with her signature yellow blossom in a towering nimbus of hair, Alinejad explained that she had been out of town for most of the time that Mehdiyev was staking out her street. On the day they overlapped, she was alarmed to lock eyes with him while looking out a front window. “He was in my sunflowers, staring into my eyes. I got really panicked,” she said, and she ducked out of the house with a friend. Mehdiyev soon fled as well and was arrested after running a stop sign.

Most of Alinejad’s testimony was about Iran’s animus toward her. “I’ve been accused of being CIA, Mossad, MI6,” she said, naming intelligence agencies of Israel and the U.K. In the courtroom, the most chilling statement of Tehran’s intentions was a cartoon on the front page of a state-owned newspaper the day after Iranians turned out for a “women in white” protest Alinejad had organized on social media. The newspaper, controlled by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, depicted Alinejad cowering in fear beneath the captive forms of two dissidents the regime had lured back to Iran from exile and executed. The caption reads, in Persian: “Next. Be Ready.”

Alinejad struggled for composure speaking of the executed activists. “Both of them were kidnapped by the Iranian regime,” she said.

In digital messages entered into evidence, the mobsters referred to their target as “the whore.” Their attorneys, however, showed Alinejad only respect, and they joined prosecutors in a statement stipulating as unchallenged fact that Iran operated assassination campaigns. “Her testimony, as courageous as it was, illustrated the contrast between Iran’s system and ours,” Michael Martin, who represented Amirov, told the jury in closing. “Presumption of innocence is one way in which we distinguish ourselves from Iran.”