At least three U.S. journalists working for Voice of America were the subjects of attempted Iranian abduction and surveillance efforts in 2019 and 2020, a former senior State Department official familiar with the security threats told the Washington Free Beacon.
In one botched plot in late 2019, Iranian operatives allegedly tried to use a female “honey trap” to lure a male VOA journalist to a hotel room in Irbil, Iraq, according to the former State Department official—a plan that failed when the reporter, who has since left VOA, declined to show up to the hotel. The plot closely mirrors the case of Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian dissident ex-pat who was lured from France to Iraq by a female Iranian operative and then taken to Iran where he was executed by the government last year.
