"This bitch is hard to catch."

That is what Carlisle Rivera texted back to Farhad Shakeri, his Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran handler who had sent him to New York with one instruction: as soon as she gets out of the house, kill her.

The response came back:

"This bitch is hard to catch."

And yes. I am hard to catch. I am hard to kill.

Not because I am brave. Not because I am special.
Because I live in America.

Because the FBI arrested the hitman. Because prosecutors investigated. Because judges listened. Because the rule of law stood between me and the men sent to murder me.

But my fellow Iranians… oh.

On Thursday I sat in a federal courtroom in New York and heard my name next to the word "murder" more than twenty times. I stopped counting. It was too painful.

The defense lawyer said his client, Jonathan Loadholt, had never even heard of me. He just needed the money. There were text messages in evidence, the hitman complaining about his $10,000 advance like a contractor frustrated about a late paycheck.

That was what my life was worth.

This was not the first time I faced my would-be assassins. It was the fourth.

Rafat Amirov and Mahdi Omarov, two Russian mobsters who planned to kill me in front of my house in Brooklyn, are now serving 25-year sentences in a New York prison.
Another Roshan monster, Khalid Mehdiyev was arrested outside my Brooklyn home with a loaded AK-47 and now waiting for this sentencing day.

Niloufar Bahadorifar an Iranian-American woman who helped the IRGC finance a plot to kidnap me, smuggle me to Venezuela, and hang me in Iran is in prison in America.

And now, Jonathan Loadholt, a convicted murderer, and Carlisle Rivera, a professional criminal, who staked out my home in Brooklyn, followed me to Fairfield University in Connecticut, bought a gun, used fake license plates. For months, they followed my path to end my life.

Farhad Shakeri, the IRGC operative who orchestrated all of it, is still free, still in Iran.

Sometimes people look at these stories and say they sound like a Hollywood movie.

Kidnapping plots.

Assassins.

Burning down a house.

Smuggling a journalist across continents.

But this is not a movie.

This is the daily reality of freedom fighters confronting authoritarian regimes.

In public, I try to be strong. I say: "I have no fear. Come and kill me. You cannot kill the idea of freedom."

But the truth is that after leaving federal court, I cried.

I cried because I am tired.

I cried because every time they fail, they send someone else.

I cried because I know that while I am protected by justice, so many brave people in Iran are facing the same killers completely alone.

Justice saved my life. The absence of justice is killing my people.

In Iran, innocent women, innocent children, innocent teenagers, innocent men are executed every single day, simply for demanding freedom.

It is not easy to carry the survivor's guilt I carry every single day. I ask myself: how can we protect unarmed people in Iran who are killed simply for demanding a normal life?

I wish my voice was truly more powerful than their weapons so I could protect my people. 💔