Conservative Institute By Christopher Burroughs
Federal authorities arrested a 44-year-old Woodland Hills woman at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday night, charging her with brokering the sale of Iranian-made drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition to Sudan’s military, a scheme prosecutors say she ran while living a glamorous life in Southern California and posting pictures of herself posing with a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz roadster.
Shamim Mafi, an Iranian national and lawful permanent U.S. resident, was taken into custody as she prepared to board a flight to Istanbul. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced the arrest the following day, stating that Mafi faces a single count of violating 50 U.S.C. § 1705, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a statute that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
The charge lands at the intersection of Iranian sanctions enforcement, an ongoing civil war in Sudan that has displaced nearly nine million people, and growing evidence that Tehran has been funneling weapons into one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. If the allegations hold, Mafi served as a critical link between Iran’s defense establishment and a conflict a United Nations fact-finding mission has described as bearing the “hallmarks of genocide.”
The alleged scheme: drones, fuses, and millions of rounds
Court records paint a picture of an arms-brokering operation that stretched across multiple countries and involved staggering sums. Prosecutors allege Mafi used an Oman-registered company, Atlas International Business, to broker weapons deals through channels in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, routing transactions to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran…
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