Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we interview Iranian-American writer Masih Alinejad, who was the target of a suspected Iranian assassination plot over the summer. We also take a look at the latest FEC filing from the United Democracy Project and its little-known involvement in the effort to boost a top Democratic primary challenger to Rep. Ilhan Omar. Also in this morning’s newsletter: Rep. Shontel Brown, David Beckham and Samantha Sutton.
President Joe Biden will take center stage this morning at the United Nations General Assembly, where he is expected to address the body around 10:30 EDT. He’ll meet with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss in back-to-back bilateral meetings before heading to the Global Fund’s Seventh Replenishment Conference, where he will deliver remarks.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, on his first visit to the U.S. as prime minister, is also set to meet today with Truss. He will also attend a meeting with representatives from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish Federations of North America and UJA-Federation of New York.
Later this afternoon, Lapid will speak at a summit hosted by United Against a Nuclear Iran. Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan and Bahraini Ambassador to the U.S. Shaikh Abdullah Bin Rashid Al Khalifa are also appearing at the conference.
Lapid met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in New York yesterday, the first meeting between an Israeli prime minister and the Turkish president since the two countries announced that they would restore full diplomatic relations.
The two leaders discussed the fight against terrorism in Israel and elsewhere, and Lapid thanked Erdoğan for intelligence cooperation when Iran attempted to carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis on Turkish soil, according to a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Additionally, the two leaders discussed the issue of missing and captive Israelis, economic and energy cooperation and regional developments.
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Journalist and Author Masih Alinejad speaks onstage during the WICT Leadership Conference at New York Marriott Marquis Hotel on October 16, 2018, in New York City.
Masih Alinejad is not marching with the thousands of women on the streets of Iran this week in protest of the country’s laws surrounding the wearing of the hijab. If she were, her massive curls — brown with streaks of blonde, often styled with a yellow flower behind her ear — would give her away easily. But the Iranian-American journalist, who built her career around advocating for Iranian women who did not want to adhere to the country’s strict modesty standards, is stuck inside a safe house in the U.S. “I’m very pleased that I’m being protected. But at the same time, it’s frustrating living in hiding,” Alinejad told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in an interview last week. “It’s like being in quarantine, except there is no cure for this virus. The Islamic Republic, to me, it’s a deadly virus.”
Enemy regime: Throughout her career, Alinejad has made an enemy of the Iranian ruling regime. Her brother spent three years in prison because of his relationship to her, and now they’re barred from speaking; her sister had to denounce Alinejad publicly. In July, a man with an AK-47 was arrested outside of Alinejad’s home in Brooklyn, a year after she was targeted in a kidnapping plot believed to be orchestrated by an Iranian intelligence network.
Community voice: Since the kidnapping attempt on her last year, Alinejad has racked up more than 7.7 million followers on Instagram, with another nearly half a million on Twitter. Lately, she’s been posting videos from the streets of Iran, showing women removing their head coverings and protesters clashing with police. Nearly all of the posts are in Farsi. “The huge number of Iranian community in the West, in America, are against the Islamic Republic,” she said.
Secret channel: People in the country send her videos knowing that anyone who communicates with Alinejad could face stiff consequences, including jail time. “But anyway, people do that. People send videos to me,” said Alinejad. “I try to give them a voice. It’s unbelievable that this is a punishable crime.” The protests started after Iran’s morality police arrested a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating the hijab rule, and she later died in police custody in Tehran.
Spread the word: Alinejad appears regularly on American news broadcasts. She’ll speak to most groups who want to hear what she has to say. Last month, she gave an interview to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. “I would love to go to Israel one day,” she said. The Jewish community was the “first victim of the Islamic Republic,” Alinejad said. “When they were oppressed, and we kept silent, we didn’t know that Islamic Republic would come after us. And now, this is a lesson for many Iranians.”