Two charged in connection with Iran drone strike that killed 3 US troops in the Middle East

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This article was published 16/12/2024 (473 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BOSTON (AP) — Two men, including a dual Iranian American citizen, have been arrested on charges that they exported sensitive technology to Iran that was used in a drone attack in Jordan that killed three American troops early this year and injured dozens of other service members, the Justice Department said Monday.

The pair were arrested after FBI specialists who analyzed the drone traced the navigation system to an Iranian company operated by one of the defendants, who relied on technology funneled from the U.S. by his alleged co-conspirator, officials said.

“We often cite hypothetical risk when we talk about the dangers of American technology getting into dangerous hands,” said U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy, the top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts. “Unfortunately, in this situation, we are not speculating.”

The defendants were identified as Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, who prosecutors say works at a Massachusetts-based semiconductor company, and Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, who was arrested Monday in Italy as the Justice Department seeks his extradition to Massachusetts.

Prosecutors allege that Abedininajafabadi, who also uses the surname Adedini and operates an Iranian company that manufactures navigation systems for drones, has connections to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. They allege that he conspired with Sadeghi to circumvent American export control laws, including through a front company in Switzerland, and procure sensitive technology into Iran.

Both men are charged with export control violations, and Abedini separately faces charges of conspiring to provide material support to Iran. A lawyer for Sadeghi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was arrested Monday in Massachusetts, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

U.S. officials blamed the January attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah.

Three Georgia soldiers — Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Sgt. Breonna Moffett of Savannah and Sgt. Kennedy Sanders of Waycross — were killed in the Jan. 28 drone attack on a U.S. outpost in northeastern Jordan called Tower 22.

In the attack, the one-way attack drone may have been mistaken for a U.S. drone that was expected to return back to the logistics base about the same time and was not shot down.

Instead, it crashed into living quarters, killing the three soldiers and injuring more than 40.

Tower 22 held about 350 U.S. military personnel at the time. It is strategically located between Jordan and Syria, only 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Iraqi border, and in the months just after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and Israel’s blistering response in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias intensified their attacks on U.S. military locations in the region.

Following the attack, the U.S. launched a huge counterstrike against 85 sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Iranian-backed militia and bolstered Tower 22’s defenses.

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Tucker and Copp reported from Washington.