Jury convicts 2 men of plotting to assassinate an Iranian American journalist in New York
The verdict was returned at a federal court in New York on Thursday, ending a two-week trial that featured dramatic testimony from a hired gunman and Alinejad, an author, activist and contributor to Voice of America.
Prosecutors said the convicted men, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, were crime bosses in the Russian mob. Their lawyers argued that they were innocent and trial evidence was flawed.
Alinejad, 48, was targeted by Iran for her online campaigns encouraging women there to record videos of themselves exposing their hair in violation of edicts requiring they cover it in public.
Iran offered $500,000 for a July 2022 killing of Alinejad after efforts to harass, smear and intimidate Alinejad failed, prosecutors said.
American officials have accused Iran of backing several assassination plots in the United States, including against President Donald Trump when he was campaigning last year. Tehran has denied being behind any plots to kill people in the U.S.
Alinejad, who was not in court, told The Associated Press she cried when she learned about the verdict.
'I am relieved that after nearly three years, the men who plotted to kill me have been found guilty. But make no mistake, the real masterminds of this crime are still in power in Iran,' she said.
Alinejad testified last week that she came to the United States in 2009 after she was banned from covering Iran's disputed presidential election and the newspaper where she worked was shut down.
Establishing herself in New York City, she built an online audience of millions and launched her 'My Stealthy Freedom' campaign, telling Iranian women to send photos and videos of them exposing their hair when the morality police were not around.
Soon, she said, she had inspired women to take to the streets in Iran on Wednesdays to peacefully protest, leading the government to arrest hundreds of them. The crackdown only caused her following to grow, however.
At the trial, prosecutors said that by 2022, the Iranian government had enlisted organized crime figures, including Amirov and Omarov, to kill Alinejad.
Khalid Mehdiyev, a former member of the Russian mob who lived in Yonkers and worked at a pizzeria, testified that he was hired as the hitman. Like Amirov and Omarov, he is from Azerbaijan, which shares a border and cultural ties with Iran.
Mehdiyev, who cooperated with prosecutors after pleading guilty to multiple crimes, said he bought an AK-47 to kill Alinejad but the plan was foiled when his car was stopped by police and the gun was found in the back seat in July 2022. A doorbell camera at Alinejad's home recorded Mehdiyev standing on her front porch.
Prosecutors have kept the investigation open. In October they announced charges against a senior Iranian military official and three others, none of whom are in custody.
In a separate case, U.S. prosecutors in 2022 charged a man in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard with plotting to kill former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.
Iranian officials vowed to exact revenge against Trump and others in his former administration over the 2020 drone strike that killed the prominent Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.
Alinejad said she has had to move nearly two dozen times since the assassination plot was discovered, at times feeling guilty that so many of her followers in Iran lack a safety net.
That, she said, only 'makes me more determined to give voice to voiceless people.'
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Business Insider
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America is about to tumble off the edge of a massive demographic cliff. The timing is no coincidence. The US birth rate peaked in 2007, with just over 4.3 million babies born that year. That number has dropped almost every year since, reaching a 30-year low of 3.8 million births in 2017. Last year, the rate was down to 3.6 million. Now, those 2007 babies are turning 18 (ugh, I know). As they prepare to start college and enter the workforce, their transition to adulthood signals a new reality for universities, employers, and the whole of America's economy. Every year from here on out — at least for the foreseeable future — colleges will face a smaller and smaller pool of prospective students and companies will see a drop-off in the number of potential workers. Before long, industries that are already grappling with worker shortages such as healthcare and agriculture could reach a point of crisis. 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With no single, clear-cut cause, the birth-rate decline is a problem without simple solutions. "I don't believe there are any policy levers — at least, that we know of — that can make a big difference here," says Wafa Orman, a laboreconomist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Social incentives like baby bonuses and parental leave help, Orman says, but not enough to flip the downward trajectory of new births. That leaves the country's nearly 4,000 degree-granting colleges and universities — the institutions most immediately affected by the demographic dropoff — to come up with their own strategies for survival. For some, the challenge will be insurmountable. Parts of the US are already feeling the pain. "Because of out-migrations and lower fertility, the northeast quadrant of the country has been in this sort of decline for a while now," says Grawe. 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That means already underserved communities end up with even fewer postsecondary options, which makes the members of those communities a lot less likely to pursue higher education, and which in turn diminishes job prospects. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects that by 2031, 72% of US jobs will require some form of postsecondary education or training, up from 68% in 2021. For small-town America, college closures can mean the loss of a vital economic lifeline. In an instant, employers lose precious talent-recruitment pipelines, local businesses lose customers, and critical public services are wrung dry. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that when Wells College shut its doors to its 350 students last spring, the upstate New York village of Aurora — home to just 255 non-student residents — was suddenly left without a quarter of its volunteer firefighters and a $200,000 tab to continue running its water-treatment plant, which the college had been operating for more than a century. Though students and rural communities pay a particularly steep toll, the economic aftershocks are significant across the board. According to a 2024 IMPLAN analysis, each college closure leads to an average loss of 265 jobs, $14 million in labor income, $21 million in GDP, and $32 million in overall economic activity. Beyond academia, the demographic cliff will strain the entire US economy. In a new report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that by 2033, deaths will begin to outpace births, culminating in a smaller and older-skewing population. This pattern of demographic shrinkage leads to a shrunken labor force, which means less economic growth over time. Japan's postwar trajectory gives a prime, and ominous, example of how it might play out in the US. In the 1950s, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida prioritized rebuilding the nation's economy by encouraging corporations to offer lifelong job security in exchange for worker loyalty. This strategy helped Japan grow into the world's third-largest economy, but it came at a cost: fertility rates dropped from 2.75 children per woman in the early 1950s to 2.08 by 1960. It has since dwindled to a historic low of 1.15 last year. The shift piled new pressures onto an already overtaxed workforce, while driving a more than trillion-dollar, or 20%, drop in the country's nominal GDP since 2021. Last year, Japan lost its slot in the world's top three economies, slipping to fourth place behind Germany. "There are some studies that show that the difference in economic growth between the United States and Japan can be entirely attributed to demographics," says Orman. "Japan's growing more slowly only because they have fewer people, and especially fewer young people. So if our population starts to shrink, we should expect to see the same thing happen." If America's demographic cliff were happening in isolation, it would present serious questions about the nation's ability to maintain its position among the world's major economic powers. But population decline is affecting a majority of countries around the world. As of 2024, the US birthrate remained higher than in nearly all of Europe, the Russian Federation, South Korea, Brazil, Japan, and China, according to UNDESCA's report. The situation presents an interesting thought experiment: If the population plunge isn't hampering the US's relative edge in the global market, is slower growth really such a big deal? Orman proposes a longer view. "Most innovation comes from young people," she says. "Young people are usually the ones that are more creative, have new ideas, and see things in a different way. Once you get older, you have the wisdom that comes with age, but you are less creative than you were in your youth." An aging population can be a detriment to innovation and progress, which is a potential detriment to societies everywhere. So what happens now? First, the bad news: A complete reproductive rebound is probably off the table. There is no precedent for pronatal policy measures raising birth rates enough to get population counts back on track, and certainly not before 2033. According to the CBO's report, the only surefire way to do that is by expanding legal pathways for immigration to the US — a solution rife with political friction. Colleges, companies, and communities will have to adapt to the hands they've been dealt. The good news is that some early strategies to adapt have already shown potential. Jenny Petty, vice president of marketing and communications at the University of Montana, says that the school saw a 40% decline in enrollment between 2011 and 2019. It has since doubled down on targeting non-traditional student populations through community-college licensing programs and workforce-development training partnerships with regional employers. The university has also focused on improving student retention, with admissions counselors shifting away from recruitment to prioritize meeting one-on-one with new students. Those efforts have paid off: Petty says that the university has seen eight consecutive semesters of enrollment growth, and retention is up to 74.8% — well above the national average of 68.2%. The University of Montana's multi-pronged approach reflects the kind of strategy that several higher-ed experts say will be necessary for colleges and universities' survival through the demographic shake-ups ahead. Student retention will be an increasingly critical piece of that puzzle. Employers and communities will similarly need to find ways to make the most of fewer workers and residents, whether by leveraging new technologies or finding creative solutions for developing young people's skills and economic capacity. "I hope that we'll see some real attention to student success, and there are institutions that have already gotten ahead of the demographic contraction," says Grawe, the Carlton College economist. "A 15% decline in enrollments is very challenging for many tuition-dependent institutions, but it's not happening all at once. It's happening bit by bit, year after year. So that's a challenge, but it's a workable challenge."
