VOA News | Monday, July 15, 2024 
US charges Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in plot to kill VOA host

The United States has charged a senior Iranian official and three others linked to Tehran for their role in a failed assassination plot targeting VOA host Masih Alinejad. Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ruhollah Bazghandi, a senior official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and three other men linked to Tehran, with participating in a failed attempt to assassinate VOA Persian Service journalist Alinejad in Brooklyn in 2022, according to a new indictment made public on Tuesday. These charges are the first to directly accuse a high-ranking official in the Revolutionary Guard, or IRGC, with a role in the plot to kill Iranian American Alinejad, a staunch critic of Iran’s repression of women. “Today’s indictment exposes the full extent of Iran’s plot to silence an American journalist for criticizing the Iranian regime,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “As these charges show, the FBI will work with our partners here and abroad to hold accountable those who target Americans.” The indictment describes Bazghandi as a brigadier general with the IRGC. The U.S. Treasury Department last year called him a counterintelligence official. Alinejad said this indictment confirms the lengths the Iranian government will go to in order to silence its critics. “It shows that this is in the DNA of the Revolutionary Guards,” she told VOA. – ‘Now we have proof’ – …Read more