# Masih Alinejad Masih Alinejad (born 1976) is an Iranian-American journalist and women's-rights activist who became one of the most prominent diaspora voices against the Islamic Republic's compulsory-hijab laws — and a repeated target of the regime's transnational repression. ## My Stealthy Freedom Exiled from Iran after her critical journalism, Alinejad built a mass following by turning the personal into the political: her "My Stealthy Freedom" campaign, launched in 2014, invited Iranian women to post photos of themselves without the mandatory headscarf, and grew into broader movements (White Wednesdays, "My Camera Is My Weapon"). Operating from the United States with an enormous social-media reach, she became a clearinghouse and amplifier for acts of defiance inside Iran — a role that proved central during the [[Woman Life Freedom]] uprising sparked by the death of [[Mahsa Amini]]. ## A Target on US Soil The regime's response has been extraordinary: US prosecutors have charged operatives linked to Iranian intelligence and the [[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]] in multiple plots to kidnap and later to assassinate Alinejad on American soil. In one case an armed man was arrested near her New York home; in another, members of an Eastern European criminal network were convicted of a murder-for-hire scheme. These plots make Alinejad one of the most vivid documented cases of Iranian transnational repression — a regime reaching across the world to silence a critic. ## Why It Matters For the vault, Alinejad is the diaspora face of the [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]] and a case study in transnational repression — authoritarian states extending their coercion beyond their borders to target exiles in democracies. Her prominence also feeds debates within the opposition (over visibility, strategy, and her engagement with US politicians), but the assassination plots against her are an unambiguous demonstration of how seriously Tehran regards the threat posed by women-led, diaspora-amplified dissent. *See also: [[Iranian History Hub]], [[Woman Life Freedom]], [[Mahsa Amini]], [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]]*