22 U.S.C. § 8561 (FOREIGN RELATIONS AND INTERCOURSE)
§ 8561. Findings
Congress finds that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran surveils, harasses, terrorizes, tortures, abducts, and murders individuals who peacefully defend human rights and freedoms in Iran, and innocent entities and individuals considered by the Government of Iran to be enemies of that regime, including United States citizens on United States soil, and takes foreign nationals hostage, including in the following instances:
(1) In 2021, Iranian intelligence agents were indicted for plotting to kidnap United States citizen, women’s rights activist, and journalist Masih Alinejad, from her home in New York City, in retaliation for exercising her rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Iranian agents allegedly spent at least approximately half a million dollars to capture the outspoken critic of the authoritarianism of the Government of Iran, and studied evacuating her by military-style speedboats to Venezuela before rendition to Iran.
(2) Prior to the New York kidnapping plot, Ms. Alinejad’s family in Iran was instructed by authorities to lure Ms. Alinejad to Turkey. In an attempt to intimidate her into silence, the Government of Iran arrested 3 of Ms. Alinejad’s family members in 2019, and sentenced her brother to 8 years in prison for refusing to denounce her.
(3) According to Federal prosecutors, the same Iranian intelligence network that allegedly plotted to kidnap Ms. Alinejad is also targeting critics of the Government of Iran who live in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates.
(4) In 2021, an Iranian diplomat was convicted in Belgium of attempting to carry out a 2018 bombing of a dissident rally in France.
(5) In 2021, a Danish high court found a Norwegian citizen of Iranian descent guilty of illegal espionage and complicity in a failed plot to kill an Iranian Arab dissident figure in Denmark.
(6) In 2021, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) appealed to the United Nations to protect BBC Persian employees in London who suffer regular harassment and threats of kidnapping by Iranian government agents.
(7) In 2021, 15 militants allegedly working on behalf of the Government of Iran were arrested in Ethiopia for plotting to attack citizens of Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates, according to United States officials.
(8) In 2020, Iranian agents allegedly kidnapped United States resident and Iranian-German journalist Jamshid Sharmahd, while he was traveling to India through Dubai. Iranian authorities announced they had seized Mr. Sharmahd in “a complex operation”, and paraded him blindfolded on state television. Mr. Sharmahd is arbitrarily detained in Iran, allegedly facing the death penalty. In 2009, Mr. Sharmahd was the target of an alleged Iran-directed assassination plot in Glendora, California.
(9) In 2020, the Government of Turkey released counterterrorism files exposing how Iranian authorities allegedly collaborated with drug gangs to kidnap Habib Chabi, an Iranian-Swedish activist for Iran’s Arab minority. In 2020, the Government of Iran allegedly lured Mr. Chabi to Istanbul through a female agent posing as a potential lover. Mr. Chabi was then allegedly kidnapped from Istanbul, and smuggled into Iran where he faces execution, following a sham trial.
(10) In 2020, a United States-Iranian citizen and an Iranian resident of California pleaded guilty to charges of acting as illegal agents of the Government of Iran by surveilling Jewish student facilities, including the Hillel Center and Rohr Chabad Center at the University of Chicago, in addition to surveilling and collecting identifying information about United States citizens and nationals who are critical of the Iranian regime.
(11) In 2019, 2 Iranian intelligence officers at the Iranian consulate in Turkey allegedly orchestrated the assassination of Iranian dissident journalist Masoud Molavi Vardanjani, who was shot while walking with a friend in Istanbul. Unbeknownst to Mr. Molavi, his “friend” was in fact an undercover Iranian agent and the leader of the killing squad, according to a Turkish police report.
(12) In 2019, around 1,500 people were allegedly killed amid a less than 2 week crackdown by security forces on anti-government protests across Iran, including at least an alleged 23 children and 400 women.
(13) In 2019, Iranian operatives allegedly lured Paris-based Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam to Iraq, where he was abducted, and hanged in Iran for sedition.
(14) In 2019, a Kurdistan regional court convicted an Iranian female for trying to lure Voice of America reporter Ali Javanmardi to a hotel room in Irbil, as part of a foiled Iranian intelligence plot to kidnap and extradite Mr. Javanmardi, a critic of the Government of Iran.
(15) In 2019, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents visited the rural Connecticut home of Iran-born United States author and poet Roya Hakakian to warn her that she was the target of an assassination plot orchestrated by the Government of Iran.
(16) In 2019, the Government of the Netherlands accused the Government of Iran of directing the assassination of Iranian Arab activist Ahmad Mola Nissi, in The Hague, and the assassination of another opposition figure, Reza Kolahi Samadi, who was murdered near Amsterdam in 2015.
(17) In 2018, German security forces searched for 10 alleged spies who were working for Iran’s al-Quds Force to collect information on targets related to the local Jewish community, including kindergartens.
(18) In 2017, Germany convicted a Pakistani man for working as an Iranian agent to spy on targets including a former German lawmaker and a French-Israeli economics professor.
(19) In 2012, an Iranian American pleaded guilty to conspiring with members of the Iranian military to bomb a popular Washington, DC, restaurant with the aim of assassinating the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States.
(20) In 1996, agents of the Government of Iran allegedly assassinated 5 Iranian dissident exiles across Turkey, Pakistan, and Baghdad, over a 5-month period that year.
(21) In 1992, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom expelled 2 Iranians employed at the Iranian Embassy in London and a third Iranian on a student visa amid allegations they were plotting to kill Indian-born British American novelist Salman Rushdie, pursuant to the fatwa issued by then supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
(22) In 1992, 4 Iranian Kurdish dissidents were assassinated at a restaurant in Berlin, Germany, allegedly by Iranian agents.
(23) In 1992, singer, actor, poet, and gay Iranian dissident Fereydoun Farrokhzad was found dead with multiple stab wounds in his apartment in Germany. His death is allegedly the work of Iran-directed agents.
(24) In 1980, Ali Akbar Tabatabaei, a leading critic of Iran and then president of the Iran Freedom Foundation, was murdered in front of his Bethesda, Maryland, home by an assassin disguised as a postal courier. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had identified the “mailman” as Dawud Salahuddin, born David Theodore Belfield. Mr. Salahuddin was working as a security guard at an Iranian interest office in Washington, DC, when he claims he accepted the assignment and payment of $5,000 from the Government of Iran to kill Mr. Tabatabaei.
(25) Other exiled Iranian dissidents alleged to have been victims of the Government of Iran’s murderous extraterritorial campaign include Shahriar Shafiq, Shapour Bakhtiar, and Gholam Ali Oveissi.
(26) Iranian Americans face an ongoing campaign of intimidation both in the virtual and physical world by agents and affiliates of the Government of Iran, which aims to stifle freedom of expression and eliminate the threat Iranian authorities believe democracy, justice, and gender equality pose to their rule.
(Pub. L. 117–328, div. AA, title II, § 202, Dec. 29, 2022, 136 Stat. 5530.)
heading: Editorial Notes
heading: Codification
text: Section was enacted as part of the Masih Alinejad Harassment and Unlawful Targeting Act of 2022, also known as the Masih Alinejad HUNT Act of 2022, and not as part of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 which comprises this chapter.