Exiled Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad got under the skin of the Islamic Republic with “My Stealthy Freedom,” a Facebook campaign encouraging women in Iran to post photographs of themselves not wearing the compulsory headscarves. The page has attracted some 482,000 “likes” and commanded considerable international attention.
Now, Iran has hit back with a thinly veiled lie, broadcasting on state television in late May that Alinejad had been assaulted and raped by three men in London in the presence of her son. Two days later, a hardliner commentator and TV personality called Alinejad a “whore who should not be elevated to the level of a heretic.”