Masih Alinejad is making headlines again after posting a touching video reacting to the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Finally, you die, finally, you go, Ali Khamenei,” she said, her voice cracking. In the same clip, she was seen hugging strangers in New York. For Erin Judd, these hugs weren’t dramatic. As she later explained, these were behaviors undertaken to survive.Responding to a comment about “hugging strangers,” she wrote that when you live in exile and can’t safely hug your own mother, strangers stop feeling like strangers. People she hugged saw joy and sadness in her face, she said. “This is not performance. This is survival.” She added that the United States saved her life three times and that the people around her have become her new family. For Alinejad, developments in Iran were never abstract political events. They are intimate, personal calculations. She wrote that survivors did not mourn when what she called the horror collapsed. They breathe. For many in Iran, Syria, Iraq and across the Middle East, moments like this represent responsibility.
Alinejad was born on September 11, 1976 in rural northern Iran. He began his career as a journalist in 2001, writing for reformist newspapers such as Hambastegi and Shargh. As a parliamentary reporter in Tehran, she reported on corruption and misconduct among lawmakers, building a reputation for sharp, confrontational reporting.She left Iran after the disputed 2009 presidential election and subsequent protests. She later studied communications at Oxford Brookes University and has lived in New York since 2009, becoming a US citizen in 2019.Erin Judd is known for her opposition to Iran’s mandatory hijab law. In 2014, she launched My Invisible Freedom, which invited women to share photos of themselves without hijab. The campaign attracted more than a million likes and evolved into related movements such as “White Wednesday” and “My Camera is My Weapon.” Through these initiatives, she positions social media as a form of civil resistance.She hosts the “Tablet” program on VOA’s Persian service and has contributed to outlets such as Iran News Agency, Farda Radio and the New York Times. In 2021, she co-founded the World Congress for Freedom. After the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, she became one of the prominent figures supporting the Women, Life, and Freedom movement. In January 2026, she gave a speech at the United Nations, accusing Iran of committing war crimes.Alinejad married Kambiz Forouzandeh in 2014. Her memoir, The Wind in My Hair, was published in 2018 and became a bestseller. She has received numerous honors over the years, including the 2015 Geneva Summit Award, the 2022 Moral Courage Award, and the 2023 Time Magazine Woman of the Year Award. The New York Times once described her as “the woman whose hair scares Iran.”From her early reporting days in Tehran to her life in exile in New York, Masih Alinejad’s career has been characterized by defying power and advocating for women’s rights. To her supporters, she is a symbol of defiance. For the Iranian nation, she remains a rival abroad.
