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NEW YORK: A US judge jailed two men for 25 years each Wednesday for a plot allegedly hatched by Tehran to kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, her team confirmed to AFP.
Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, both members of an eastern European criminal gang, orchestrated a failed plot to assassinate campaigning reporter Alinejad.
“They wanted to see me dead on my porch in Brooklyn and thanks to the law enforcement agencies, I am alive and Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader (of Iran), is humiliated,” Alinejad said outside a Manhattan courthouse following the sentencing, brandishing a sunflower.
“I was nervous but at the same time very empowered to speak the truth,” she added before dancing and singing in Farsi.
Amirov and Omarov were both jailed for 25 years, a spokesman for Alinejad said following the hearing, after prosecutors had sought 55-year terms for each, according to court filings.
According to the Justice Department, the jailed men, members of the eastern European crime network, were “contracted” by Ruhollah Bazghandi — identified as a brigadier general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — and other members of his network to murder Alinejad.
In July 2022, a man hired to carry out the assassination was arrested near Alinejad’s New York home with a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, the court heard over the two week trial.
The 49-year-old Alinejad, one of the most prominent dissident campaigners against Iranian authorities, for years has pushed for the abolition of the obligatory headscarf in Iran under the banner of “MyStealthyFreedom.”
She left Iran in 2009.
Charges were unsealed in October 2024 against Bazghandi, a former intelligence officer.
Three other Iranians with “connections to the government of Iran” — Hajj Taher, Hossein Sedighi and Seyed Mohammad Forouzan — were indicted over the affair.
The three are not in US custody and are believed to be in Iran. They face charges of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering.
Tehran has routinely rejected similar US accusations about alleged plots to kill American officials or politicians in the past.
The United States has also accused Iran of seeking to assassinate US officials in retaliation for Washington’s killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
The State Department previously announced a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the alleged Iranian mastermind behind a plot to assassinate former White House official John Bolton.

DUBAI: Fast Company Middle East and regional advertising group Middle East Communications Network have released a new white paper highlighting the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion as a powerful driver of creativity, business performance and sustainable economic growth across the Middle East.

Titled “The Middle East’s Inclusive Economy,” the white paper draws on proprietary survey data, statistics and regional case studies to explore the impact of DEI across sectors such as finance, oil and gas, hospitality, healthcare and retail.

The survey, conducted in the first two quarters of this year, found that 85 percent of respondents believe that DEI has had a strong positive impact on industry and regional economic performance.

More than half (53 percent) reported increased participation from underrepresented groups in their workforce, and 76 percent observed higher retention rates when DEI is embedded into company strategy.

A further 76 percent also said that DEI directly contributes to gross domestic product growth and long-term resilience.

The paper highlights the concept of “inclusion as infrastructure,” and argues that inclusion and equity should be treated as foundational systems rather than short-term initiatives.

It notes that when DEI is deeply embedded into hiring, leadership and workplace culture, organizations outperform their peers in engagement, creativity and retention.

George Giessen, head of brands at MCN agency MullenLowe MENA, said that DEI is more than just a moral imperative.

Although a “fair and equitable society is important,” the research demonstrates DEI’s power to drive growth; “a lever one can pull to achieve organizational goals and accomplish economic visions of a nation,” he told Arab News.

“In short: DEI has a practical and measurable use in economies,” he added.

Still, there is a gap in the region. DEI is “still regularly treated as a reputational add-on rather than a driver of business value,” said Ghassan Harfouche, group CEO of MCN MENAT & president of McCann Worldgroup APAC.

The white paper is MCN’s response to this gap, aiming to serve as a “data-driven tool designed to help organizations reframe DEI as infrastructure for growth,” he added.

Governments across the region are increasingly adopting DEI into policy and regulatory frameworks. ��������, for instance, has nearly doubled female labor force participation from 22.5 percent in 2006 to 43.2 percent in 2024.

Meanwhile, the UAE leads the Middle East and North Africa region in gender equality, according to the 2025 Global Gender Gap Index. It mandates 30 percent female representation in private sector leadership and has more than 23,000 Emirati businesswomen leading ventures valued at more than $13.6 billion.

The whitepaper is the first step in “a wider journey to better understand the bottom line impact of DEI” and provide the “framework to further evolve DEI in our businesses,” Giessen said.