In 2009, while Iranian authorities assured the world that protests following the rigged presidential elections were peaceful, one journalist was gathering evidence of the exact opposite. Masih Alinejad documented cases of 57 people killed during the demonstrations. This work cost her her homeland but gave her something else: an international platform from which she would fight for Iranian women’s rights for years to come.
From Village to Parliament
Masih Alinejad was born in September 1976 in the small village of Ghomi Kola in northern Iran. She was interested in politics from a young age, which in a theocratic state quickly led to conflict with authorities.
At just eighteen and pregnant, she was arrested along with her brother for distributing leaflets criticizing the Islamic regime. She was released relatively quickly, but her companions spent two and a half years in prison.
The early 21st century brought her a journalism career. She began working for Hamshahri newspaper and later collaborated with other outlets, most of which were eventually shut down by authorities. As a parliamentary reporter, she became known for asking tough questions.
In 2005, she exposed a corruption scandal involving MPs awarding themselves bonuses under the guise of various holidays and religious duties. The article made headlines, and its author lost her parliamentary accreditation.
Two Strands of Hair
Life as a journalist in Iran meant a constant struggle not only for access to information but also for basic dignity. During one interview, a parliament member who was also a cleric refused to answer her question until she adjusted her hijab. The reason: two strands of hair showing under her scarf. When she attempted to argue, he raised his fist at her. Only the intervention of other journalists prevented any violence.
This incident illustrates the daily reality for Iranian women, who have been required to wear head coverings since the age of seven. Alinejad later recalled that as a teenager, she had to lie on the floor so her parents could flatten her thick hair before tying her headscarf. Ironically, hair would later become the symbol of her activism.
A Million Women Without Hijabs
After being forced into exile in 2009, Alinejad first went to London and then to the United States in 2014. There, she launched the Facebook page My Stealthy Freedom, inviting Iranian women to post photos of themselves without hijabs. The response exceeded all expectations, with the page rapidly gaining over a million followers.
Tehran’s reaction was brutal. In 2019, authorities announced that women sending materials to Alinejad’s page faced ten years in prison.
The state media called the activist a prostitute and spread fabricated stories about a supposed rape in the London Underground. Doctored photos were shown to her father, a simple villager, who refused to speak to his daughter for three years.
Her family paid a high price for her activism. In 2019, Iranian security services arrested her brother, who was sentenced to eight years in prison and, according to an American court, was tortured while in custody. Her sister and niece were forced to appear on state television and declare that the family was ashamed of Masih’s activities.
Hunted for the Voice of Freedom
Life in exile did not mean safety. In 2021, the FBI thwarted a plan to kidnap the journalist from New York to Iran via Venezuela. Iranian intelligence agents hired private detectives to track her, studied evacuation routes by speedboat, and examined maritime connections between New York and Venezuela. A year later, a man pulled up outside her Brooklyn home with a loaded AK-47 in the trunk.
The situation escalated in 2024 when US authorities charged an Iranian general for a plot to murder Alinejad. In March 2025, a federal court in New York sentenced two members of the Azerbaijani faction of the Russian mafia to 25 years in prison each for their role in an assassination attempt on her life.
Despite repeated attempts to silence her, Masih Alinejad remains one of the loudest voices of the Iranian opposition. Time magazine named her Woman of the Year 2023. She hosts programs on the Persian-language Voice of America TV and podcasts devoted to fighting authoritarianism. The story of a woman who started by handing out leaflets in a small village and ended up as a target of international espionage operations shows just how much regimes fear the free word.
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.