LOS ANGELES — A 44-year-old Iranian national living in suburban Los Angeles has been charged with illegally brokering the sale of Iranian-manufactured weapons — including drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition — to the Sudanese government, federal authorities announced Monday.
Shamim Mafi, a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 2016, was taken into custody at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday. A criminal complaint, dated March 12, alleges that Mafi operated as a middleman in a sophisticated arms-trafficking network that funnelled weapons from Iran into a country already engulfed in one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes.
US Attorney Bill Essayli announced the charges via social media, outlining how Mafi and an unnamed co-conspirator ran a company in Oman called Atlas International Business. That entity received more than $7 million in payments in 2025 alone, prosecutors allege. Among the most significant transactions detailed in the complaint: the brokering of a sale of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese Ministry of Defence. Mafi is also alleged to have submitted a formal letter of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to procure those fuses on Sudan’s behalf.
Mafi, a resident of Woodland Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles, was scheduled to appear in US District Court in Los Angeles on Monday. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
The charges arrive as Sudan enters the fourth year of a devastating civil war between its national army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The conflict has drawn in a web of foreign actors, with the Sudanese army receiving backing from Egypt and Saudi Arabia and deploying both Turkish- and Iranian-made drones on the battlefield. The United Arab Emirates has faced repeated accusations of channelling arms to the RSF — allegations it denies — while the RSF itself has been accused of committing genocide.
The United Nations has repeatedly called on foreign powers to cease fuelling the conflict. Denise Brown, the UN’s top official in Sudan, has described the situation as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with the organisation warning that the country risks sliding into full-scale famine and societal collapse. The alleged arms pipeline now under scrutiny in a Los Angeles federal court represents precisely the kind of external interference the UN has condemned.
The case underscores the reach of Iranian weapons networks beyond the Middle East. The IRGC has long been designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States, and any transaction involving its military hardware is subject to sweeping American sanctions. Prosecutors allege that Mafi’s Oman-based company served as a conduit to obscure the Iranian origin of the weapons and circumvent those restrictions.
The timing of the arrest adds further weight to the charges. Tensions between the United States and Iran have intensified in recent weeks, with shipping traffic through key regional waterways slowing sharply amid escalating diplomatic pressure. Iran has signalled it is weighing how to proceed as a ceasefire deadline approaches, while the Trump administration has indicated it is unlikely to extend any pause in hostilities.
For Sudan, the alleged weapons transfer represents another chapter in a war that has already displaced millions and pushed vast swaths of the population toward starvation. The Sudanese army’s use of Iranian-made drones has been documented on multiple fronts, and the alleged delivery of tens of thousands of bomb fuses would have provided significant battlefield capability to government forces.
Federal investigators have not publicly identified Mafi’s co-conspirator, and it remains unclear whether additional arrests are imminent. The case is being prosecuted in the Central District of California.
