Joshua S. Levy, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, announced the arrests on Monday.
Credit...Steven Senne/Associated Press

Justice Dept. Charges 2 Men in Deadly Drone Attack on U.S. Soldiers

The men are accused of supplying key parts in Iranian drones that killed three U.S. service members and injured dozens of others at an American military base in Jordan.

by · NY Times

The Justice Department has charged two men with illegally supplying parts used in an Iranian-backed militia’s drone attack in January that killed three U.S. service members and injured more than 40 others at an American military base in Jordan, federal prosecutors in Boston announced on Monday.

Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, 42, a dual U.S.-Iranian national of Natick, Mass., and Mohammad Abedini, 38, of Tehran, were charged with conspiring to export sophisticated electronic components to Iran, violating American export control and sanctions laws.

Mr. Abedini was also charged with providing material support, resulting in death, to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military that the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization.

Mr. Sadeghi was arrested on Monday and made an initial appearance in the federal court in Boston. Mr. Abedini was arrested, also on Monday, in Italy by Italian authorities at the request of the United States.

Iran has made serious advances in the design and production of military drones in recent years, and has stepped up its transfer to terrorist groups across the Middle East, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iran has used its drone program to build its global importance and increase weapons sales but has suffered setbacks in its confrontation with Israel. In April, Iran launched an attack on Israel that largely failed. Israel intercepted most of the roughly 200 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

Iran has also run into supply chain issues, a problem that it apparently was trying to solve — at least partly — by evading American laws.

Joshua S. Levy, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said at a news conference that F.B.I. explosive experts recovered the drone used in the attack and traced its sophisticated navigation equipment to Mr. Abedini’s company in Tehran.

Mr. Sadeghi works for a semiconductor company in Massachusetts, Mr. Levy said. Mr. Abedini, who lives in Iran, runs a company in Tehran and has deep connections to the Iranian government and the I.R.G.C.

Prosecutors said Mr. Sadeghi introduced Mr. Abedini to his employer. Mr. Abedini then established a front company in Switzerland that was used to buy American technologies and transfer them to Iran. The two men conspired to violate U.S. export laws from 2016 to 2024, prosecutors said.

Mr. Levy described a sophisticated scheme that went on for years before federal investigators uncovered it. Prosecutors said that in 2016, Mr. Sadeghi traveled to Iran to seek funding from the Iranian National Elites Foundation, a governmental organization, eventually developing a partnership with Mr. Abedini.

The attack that killed the three soldiers, members of the Army Reserve, happened on Jan. 28 at a remote logistics outpost in northeast Jordan called Tower 22, where the borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan converge. The one-way attack drone hit near the outpost’s living quarters, causing injuries that ranged from minor cuts to brain trauma, a U.S. military official said.

Mr. Abedini was working with the arm of the Revolutionary Guards known as the Aerospace Force that relied on his company’s navigation system, according to the criminal complaint.

“These defendants are charged with supplying sensitive technology to an Iranian company that develops technology the I.R.G.C. uses in its one-way attack drones to commit acts of terror around the world,” said Matthew S. Axelrod, the assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

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