Carlisle Rivera, a man who prosecutors say was hired by Iranian operative Farhad Shakeri as part of a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday.
Alinejad has survived three plots by Iran’s regime to kill or kidnap her. On Wednesday, she confronted Rivera at his sentencing in federal court in Manhattan.
“Now I’m going to face the killer, my would-be assassin,” Alinejad, a critic of Iran’s repression of women, said before sentencing. “But the main killer in my eyes is the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).”
Both Alinejad and her husband spoke at Wednesday’s emotional sentencing, telling the court they live in constant fear. Alinejad said the Iranian government seeks to silence her and make it so that she cannot live a normal life. She implored the judge to hand down the maximum sentence, which he did, to send a message to the Iranian government, but he also noted that the sentencing wasn’t just about Iran, but about Rivera himself and the crime he committed.
After Rivera was sentenced, Alinejad told CBS News, “Justice is always beautiful. It is justice for me.”
“But, in the bigger picture, no,” she responded when asked if the sentencing was justice, saying it was not enough to just put her would-be killers behind bars.
“This is kind of the [Iranian] regime challenging U.S. national security, on U.S. soil, sending a signal that we can do whatever we want,” she said, adding that real justice would be seeing “the man who ordered my killing … behind bars,” she said in reference to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who she said she wants to see “humiliated the same way as” former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was captured by U.S. forces in a military operation in Venezuela earlier this month and brought back to New York to face federal charges.
It was the second time that Alinejad has faced a man charged with plotting to assassinate her in the past year. Two men, who prosecutors said were members of a Russian mob hired by Iran, received 25-year prison terms in October for attempting to kill Alinejad at her Brooklyn home.
Seth Wenig / AP
“The IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards, is behind the assassination plots. The same IRGC that is ordering a massacre right now in Iran,” she said. “I’ve been bombarded by Iranians receiving videos showing the IRGC using AK-47 military weapons to kill people. The same IRGC gave money to the assassins here to buy AK-47s to end my life.”
Prosecutors said Shakeri was “tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets.”
Prosecutors alleged that in the latest attempt, Shakeri directed two criminal associates in New York, Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, to murder Alinejad.
That attempt was set to take place in February 2024 at Fairfield University in Connecticut, where Alinejad had a speaking event.
After months of surveillance, their plot was foiled. Rivera and Loadholt were arrested in November 2024 and pleaded guilty before the case could go to trial.
Loadholt’s sentencing is scheduled for April 23. Shakeri is believed to be in Iran.
Federal authorities said Shakeri told them he also had been assigned by the IRGC to arrange to kill President Trump before the 2024 election.
“It sounds weird,” Alinejad said Wednesday after Shakeri’s sentencing. “Because President Trump has an army, everything, power. I’m just an Iranian, unarmed woman, with a lot of hair, with a big voice. That’s it. And that shows you that the regime in Iran is really scared of its own people.”
She said it was a “badge of honor that they hate me. Whatever it is I did, that they hate me that much that they want to get rid of me as much as they want to get rid of President Trump.”
When she first learned the same man had plotted to kill her and Mr. Trump, Alinejad “laughed loud” and told her husband: “Wow, they think I am as powerful as President Trump. … Just my voice. My weapon is my voice.”
At the same time, Alinejad said she felt scared, recalling how for years the Iranian regime said America is the “great Satan” and “biggest enemy of Iran.”
“The same group who targeted President Trump, they wanted to target me,” she said. “It means that now in their eyes, I am the great Satan. I am their biggest enemy.”
Alinejad is a journalist and leader of a movement to free Iranian women of the compulsory hijab. She fled Iran in 2009, settling in the United States.
She alleges Khamenei ordered her killing, pointing to a speech in which he refers to an “American agent” who had compared the compulsory hijab to the Berlin Wall. Alinejad has previously made that exact comparison.
Alinejad said that the day before she was scheduled to speak at Fairfield University, the FBI came to her home to warn her about an imminent threat. Agents took her to a safe house. The university cancelled the event.
“I want to face him and say, really you wanted to shoot at a university? How many innocent students could have been killed by you?” she said of Rivera’s sentencing.
Alinejad views her mission as exposing the situation in Iran and giving voice to victims, but worries the attempts on her life will create a fear of inviting her to speak.
“By sending killers to America, they’re not just targeting me. They’re targeting the freedom of speech in America,” she said. “They are trying to cover up their massacre.”
“I’m very grateful to America for bringing my would-be assassins to justice,” added Alinejad. “But I want the greatest sponsor of terrorism, Ali Khamenei, who ordered my killing and now ordered the massacre in Iran, to be held accountable by the United States of America.”
— Masih Alinejad is a CBS News contributor