She was the target of an Iranian assassination plot. She now lives in its shadow

Masih Alinejad is lucky to be alive.

In late July 2022, a hitman was standing on the front porch of her home in Brooklyn, N.Y. The man, bearded and wearing a black T-shirt and baggy black shorts, had allegedly been hired as part of a plot hatched in Iranto assassinate Alinejad, a dissident and outspoken critic of the Iranian regime.

The only thing separating him from Alinejad was her front door.

Alinejad was home at the time, on a Zoom call with the Russian chess champion and political activist Gary Kasparov and the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.

“I was in a very deep conversation. It was very tense, and we were talking about initiating a new organization, so that’s why I didn’t want to leave the meeting,” Alinejad said. “So when I heard someone knocking at the door, I was like, OK, after the meeting, so I didn’t open the door.”

That Zoom call likely saved her life.

When she didn’t answer the door, the suspect returned to his car and drove off, running a stop sign near her house. The police pulled him over and found an AK-47-style rifle in the back seat of his car. He was arrested, and from there the FBI unraveled what prosecutors say was a murder-for-hire scheme directed from Iran to assassinate Alinejad.

“I actually asked the FBI what happened that I’m alive now,” Alinejad told NPR. “They said 'You were lucky.' "

She was lucky, in part, because the FBI was aware Iran was targeting her, but the bureau didn’t know that the man on her porch was part of the alleged assassination plot or that he was armed with a gun, she said.

The murder-for-hire scheme to kill Alinejad is one of at least four state-sponsored plots that the Justice Department says it has foiled in the past several years. It is part of a