Driver gets 10 years in Iran-backed plot to kill Masih Alinejad

A federal judge sentenced Jonathan Loadholt to 10 years in prison for helping a plot that U.S. officials say was directed by the Government of Iran and aimed at silencing Masih Alinejad on American soil. Loadholt, 37, a former truck and bus driver from Staten Island, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit stalking and conspiracy to commit money laundering before U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman in Manhattan federal court.

Prosecutors said Loadholt was part of an operation that targeted Alinejad in Brooklyn in 2024, with payments tied to surveillance of the Iranian American journalist, author and human rights activist. FBI official James Barnacle said Loadholt was assigned to watch Alinejad and was moving toward an eventual assassination plan when agents arrested him first. The Justice Department said the case was not an isolated street crime but a foreign-directed effort to reach a dissident living in the United States.

Alinejad has long been one of Tehran’s most visible critics. She left Iran in 2009 after the disputed presidential election and became a U.S. citizen in 2019. Her campaigns, which encouraged Iranian women to post photos and videos of themselves defying compulsory headscarf rules, made her a persistent target of Iranian pressure and intimidation. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Iran sought to silence her because of her criticism of the regime’s treatment of women, corruption and human rights abuses.

The sentence followed another punishment in the same case. Carlisle Rivera, Loadholt’s co-defendant, was sentenced to 15 years in January 2026 after apologizing in court. Federal prosecutors have also linked this case to a separate plot against Alinejad: in 2025, two other men were sentenced to 25 years each for a 2022 plan to kidnap her from her Brooklyn home and kill her. In that earlier case, prosecutors said Iran had placed a $500,000 bounty on her head.

Together, the cases have become a test of how aggressively the federal government is treating transnational repression inside the United States. Prosecutors say Iran has pursued assassination plots against critics in the U.S. and abroad, and the sentences handed down in New York suggest federal authorities are responding with long prison terms rather than treating the threats as isolated crimes.