December 30, 2021
In a recent Zoom event with Senator Chris Coons (D) and CNN Senior Policy Analyst John Avlon, activist journalist Masih Alinejad, used a partisan audience to spread lies about how the Islamic Republic (IR) only targeted one side of the U.S. political aisle during the 2020 election cycle. She stated: “They were supporting President Trump, the trolls, on social media from the IR” (1). This is factually wrong. The March 2021 NIC’s report states “Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects—though without directly promoting his rivals—undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the US.”
Iranian Americans are deeply concerned about her partisan call to censorship of right of center Iranian Americans, including Iranian American supporters of President Trump. Indeed, this Zoom segment starts by Senator Coons lamenting that if it was not for Twitter, President Trump would not have been elected in the first place, using that as a basis of his argument to push for censorship.
Given Ms. Alinejad’s well documented history of supporting progressive causes, many feel justified in suspecting the motivation behind her statements and actions. Ms. Alinejad has been a supporter of extreme causes like violent BLM protests and open borders, and helped organize anti-Trump protests with the known anti-Semite Linda Sarsour. She used her position in US government funded Voice of America to attack critics of Obama-Biden policy, including President Trump, and openly supported Obama-Biden policy of JCPOA.
Ms. Alinejad has accused her detractors of being the agents of the IR. This is unprofessional and against the principles of accountability that she was asking the Democrat senator and CNN analyst to uphold. We call upon her to publicly and explicitly clarify her message and show her support for democratic freedoms Iranian Americans are afforded by the US constitution.
IAL strongly condemns the personal attacks against our board members by Ms. Alinejad’s camp in response to our statement (2). IAL will not tolerate the campaign of sexual harassment, online bullying, and physical threats to our advisory board members and affiliates who bore no responsibility for the statement. We invite Ms. Alinejad to show she does not condone such behavior.
In response to the online backlash to her comments, Ms. Alinejad has called upon Twitter to ban Ayatollah Khamenei. While we sympathize with this sentiment that is shared by many Iranians inside Iran, we find this too narrow of a target.
The IR in its entirety, and all its officials and affiliates should not have access to US based internet technology. In fact, Iranian dissidents called for such blanket sanctions in a letter dated 11/20/19, calling for the enforcement of anti-terrorism laws against sanctioned IR officials and bodies including Khamenei (3). They said “officials of the IR that bans its own people from access to the Internet, do not deserve to enjoy access to the free world’s social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Gmail and other Google services”. IAL has been smeared as a pro-Khamenei organization by Ms. Alinejad’s camp. This is inexcusable given that many board members of IAL were signatories to that 2019 letter.
IAL respects the political differences between our organization and Ms. Alinejad. Given our commitment to challenge the IR, we propose to combine our mutual interest in keeping Khamenei and the rest of this evil regime off US based internet platforms as the basis for a bipartisan effort to enforce existing sanctions by the US congress. We proudly supported H.Res.800 this past November, a resolution with 41 cosponsors, recognizing the two-year anniversary of 2019 massacre of civilians by the IR and condemning human rights violations in Iran.
We are confident that we have the support of House Republicans for a resolution to ban access to US based internet platforms by IR officials and its affiliates. As a progressive activist, Ms. Alinejad is well positioned to bring her side of the aisle in support of this resolution. We hope that despite our disagreements, Ms. Alinejad will prove her critics wrong and join us to bring an end to the use of US based technology by the IR to propagate its hateful message.
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