Iranian engineer and businessman Mohammad Abedini was arrested on Dec. 16, at the request of the United States, by the Italian police in Milan’s Malpensa Airport after landing on a flight from Turkey.

As indicated in a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice dated that day, Abedini and an Iranian-American business associate—Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, who was arrested in Massachusetts—have been charged with conspiring to export sophisticated electronic components from the United States to Iran in violation of  U.S. export control and sanctions laws.

Abedini is also charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which resulted in the deaths of U.S. military personnel after a drone strike on Jan. 28, 2024, on the Tower 22 outpost in Jordan that killed three American soldiers and injured more than 40 others. According to the FBI, the attack was carried out by Tehran-backed militias and was equipped with a navigation system produced by Abedini’s company, San’at Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak (SDRA).

“SDRA’s main business is selling a proprietary navigation system, known as the Sepehr Navigation System, to the IRGC, which the United States designated” as a foreign terrorist entity in April 2019, per the Justice Department. “The primary application of…