Two charged in connection with Iran drone strike that killed 3 US troops in the Middle East
Two men, including an Iranian U.S. citizen, have been arrested on charges that they exported sensitive technology to Iran that was used in a drone strike in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops and injured dozens more early this year.
BOSTON — Two men, including an Iranian-American citizen, have been arrested on charges that they exported sensitive technology to Iran used in a drone attack in Jordan killing three U.S. troops and wounding dozens of other service members early this year, the Justice Department said Monday.
The criminal case in federal court in Massachusetts accuses the men, identified as Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi and Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, of export control violations.
U.S. officials blamed the attack in January on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah.
Three Georgian soldiers – Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, sergeant. Breonna Moffett of Savannah and Sgt. Kennedy Sanders of Waycross – were killed in the Jan. 28 drone strike on a U.S. outpost in northeastern Jordan called Tower 22.
In the attack, the one-way drone was possibly mistaken for a US drone that was expected to return to the logistics base around the same time and was not shot down.
Instead, the plane crashed into living quarters, killing the three soldiers and injuring more than forty.
At the time, Tower 22 could accommodate approximately 350 American soldiers. It is strategically located between Jordan and Syria, just 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Iraqi border, and in the months immediately following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s blistering response in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias intensified their attacks. at US military locations in the region.
After the attack, the US launched a huge counterattack against 85 locations in Iraq and Syria used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iranian-backed militias and strengthened the defenses of Tower 22.
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Tucker and Copp reported from Washington.