BOSTON (AP) — Two men, including a dual Iranian American citizen, have been charged with conspiring to export 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.
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. More than 40 other Americans were injured.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
U.S. officials have blamed the attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah. The men charged in connection with the attack have been identified as Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, who prosecutors say worked at a Massachusetts-based semiconductor company, and Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, who was arrested Monday in Italy as the Justice Department seeks his extradition to Massachusetts.
The pair were arrested after FBI specialists who analyzed the drone traced its navigation system to an Iranian company operated by one of the defendants, who relied on parts and technology funneled into the country by his alleged co-conspirator, prosecutors said.
“We often cite hypothetical risk when we talk about the dangers of American technology getting into dangerous hands,” U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy, the top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts, said at a news conference announcing the charges. “Unfortunately, in this situation, we are not speculating.”
Rivers, Moffett and Sanders were all laid to rest in their respective hometowns, and their communities embraced their families in mourning, according to reports earlier this year from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Rivers, 46, was affectionately nicknamed “Old Man Rivers” because of his years of experience, the AJC previously reported. He was married with one son and two stepchildren and enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2011 as an interior electrician and completed a nine-month rotation in Iraq in 2018.
Moffett had just turned 23, the AJC previously reported. She was described as a natural leader and graduated from Windsor Forest High School, where she was drum major and cadet leader in the JROTC.
Sanders, 24, joined the service in 2018, a year after graduating from Ware County High School. News video of her parents receiving a phone call from President Joe Biden offering his condolences was widely viewed on social media.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Prosecutors allege that Abedininajafabadi, who was also called Adedini in court documents, has deep connections to the Iranian government. They say his Tehran-based company manufactures navigation systems for the military drone program of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and that he conspired with Sadeghi to circumvent American export control laws, including through the creation of a front company in Switzerland, and procure sensitive technology into Iran.
Sadeghi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested Monday in Massachusetts and was ordered to remain detained following a court appearance. His lawyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Both men are charged with export control violations, and Abedini separately faces charges of conspiring to provide material support to Iran.
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.
“To the people who were injured by this attack, to the loved ones and family members of the people who lost their lives, as the son of a combat veteran I humbly hope that today’s charges bring some measure of justice and accountability,” Levy said.
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.
