American Jailed For Smuggling Tech, Electronic Goods to Iran

A dual US/Iranian national has been sentenced to jail for 30 months by a federal court in Brooklyn after he smuggled banned tech to Iran via dummy companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In a statement on the ruling, The Department of Justice (DOJ) said(Opens in a new window) Kambiz Attar Kashani, 44, had conspired to illegally export US goods and technology to end users in Iran that included the country’s Central Bank. 

According to the DOJ, between 2019 and 2021 Kashani and his accomplices used two dummy companies in the UAE to secure electronic goods and technology from US companies for clients that included the Central Bank of Iran, an agency that the US government believes has “materially supported” listed terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

The supplied technology and goods in question included(Opens in a new window) “six power supplies; two subscriptions to a proprietary computer software program, several fixed attenuators, two subscriptions to operating software, and several storage systems.”

In a comment on the sentencing, Alan E. Kohler Jr, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division said: “This is a sobering reminder that illegally exporting material is not an abstract economic concern – it is a crime with a direct impact on the safety of the American people.” 

Meanwhile, US Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York said Kashani’s scheme to sell US tech to Iran “undermined U.S. foreign policy and national security interests and warranted a substantial sentence of incarceration to deter others.”

The DOJ remarked: “Kashani and his co-conspirators intentionally concealed from the US companies that they intended to send the items to Iran, falsely claiming that the UAE companies would be the ultimate end users. By providing the Central Bank of Iran and other end users in Iran with sophisticated, top-tier US electronic equipment and software, Kashani and his co-conspirators enabled the Iranian banking system to operate more efficiently, effectively and securely.”

The US designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. In recent months, however, the US government loosened restrictions(Opens in a new window) on US technology companies from offering Iranians its services in the wake of protests against the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who had been held at a police station for not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards.