Iran Hired Americans To Assassinate Famed Dissident. One Just Got Sentenced.

On Wednesday, a Staten Island man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in a yearslong, state-sponsored plot directed by the government of Iran to assassinate prominent journalist and human rights activist Masih Alinejad on U.S. soil.

Jonathan Loadholt, 37, received the decade-long sentence from U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit stalking and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Federal prosecutors revealed that Loadholt and his co-defendant, Carlisle Rivera, were hired as local “guns for hire” by an asset of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — the primary military and intelligence branch reporting directly to Iran’s supreme leader.

According to court documents, the IRGC’s operation relied on a chain of proxies. High-ranking Iranian officials directed Farhad Shakeri, an IRGC asset who remains at large, to orchestrate the murder. Shakeri subsequently offered Rivera $100,000 to execute the hit. Rivera then recruited Loadholt.

Using funds funneled from Iran, Loadholt and Rivera purchased a firearm and “burner” cellphones and tracked Alinejad for months. The plotters used fake license plates to stalk her at her Brooklyn residence and even followed her to a public speaking event at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Law enforcement disrupted the plot and arrested Loadholt on November 7, 2024, uncovering more than two dozen rounds of ammunition at his residence.

“The Government of Iran tried to silence Ms. Alinejad because of her efforts to stand up to the Iranian regime,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton. “While this plot was directed from Iran, the would-be assassins were American citizens who agreed to kill Ms. Alinejad for money — out of greed.”

Loadholt is the second operative sentenced in this specific branch of the conspiracy. In January 2026, Rivera was sentenced to 15 years in prison by Judge Liman after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire.

The sentencing marks yet another flashpoint in Tehran’s relentless, multi-year campaign to eliminate Alinejad, a U.S. citizen who has long been a fierce critic of the theocratic Iranian regime. Through her work, including reporting for the Voice of America Persian Service, Alinejad has consistently exposed Iran’s human rights abuses, its corruption, and its restrictive laws against women, such as the compulsory hijab. Her advocacy has drawn severe retaliation; her brother was previously jailed in Iran by the IRGC, and her elderly mother has faced aggressive interrogations.

Federal authorities noted that the IRGC has repeatedly shifted tactics to silence her:

• 2020–2021: Iranian intelligence assets plotted to kidnap Alinejad in New York for forced transfer to Iran.
• 2022: The IRGC hired violent members of the Russian mafia to assassinate her.

That Eastern European mob network collapsed when an Azerbaijani hitman was caught outside Alinejad’s home with an AK-47. In October 2025, Russian underworld figures Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov each received 25-year federal prison sentences for their roles in that $500,000 murder-for-hire scheme.

“Once upon a time, a little girl in Iran was taught to shout Death to America so loud the White House would shake,” Alinejad wrote. “Life’s irony: the same country she was told to hate gave her a second life. Yes, her adopted country, America, arrested the killers sent by her birth country, Iran to murder her in her sunflower garden in New York and sentenced them to 25 years in prison. From Iran to the United States of America, this is the story of freedom, survival, and truth that can’t be silenced.”