Weapons smuggler jailed for 40 years after shipping ballistic missiles from Iran

An arms smuggler who used a fishing boat to send ballistic missile parts from Iran to Houthi rebels in Yemen was sentenced to 40 years in prison in the United States.

Pakistani national Mohammed Pahlawan was detained during a US military operation in the Arabian Sea in January 2024, during which two US Navy SEALs were drowned.

Pahlawan’s crew testified that they were deceived into believing they were working as fishermen.

At the time, the Houthis launched constant missile and drone attacks on Israel and targeted international commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they were acting in support of Gazans. Iran has consistently denied arming the Houthis.

Detailed testimony given by the crew in a court in the US state of Virginia provides a rare look inside a smuggling operation that powered the attacks.

U.S. federal prosecutors said in a statement after Pahlawan’s hearing that the components found on Pahlawan’s boat were “some of the most advanced weapons systems that Iran has distributed to other terrorist groups.”

The 49-year-old man was sentenced to prison on Thursday, having previously been convicted of five offences, including terrorism offenses and possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Court documents show the sentences on two of the five charges will run concurrently for 240 months, or 20 years. The other three counts will continue consecutively with this for another 20 years; There will be 480 months in total, that is, 40 years.

Eight crew members who testified in court said that they had no idea what was inside the large packages found on the boat named Yunus.

One of the crew members said that when he questioned Pahlawan about this, he was told to mind his own business.

But Pahlawan knew how dangerous the cargo was.

He referred to himself as a “dead man walking” in text message exchanges with his wife in the days before the January 2024 trip that would lead to his arrest.

“Just pray [we] The message, which stated “Return safely”, was used as evidence in court.

“Why are you talking like that, ‘he may or may not come back'” he asked.

Pahlawan told him: “That’s the nature of the matter, my dear, that’s the nature of the matter.”

His last words to her before setting sail were: “Keep me in your prayers. May God get me there safe and bring me back safe, okay. Pray.”

Pahlawan was paid 1,400 million riyals (£25,200; $33,274) for this trip; it was a significant fee that prosecutors at his trial described as “hazard money.”

The then-US Department of Defense (now known as the War Department) said in a statement in June that the trip was “part of a larger operation” financed and coordinated by two Iranian brothers, Younis and Shahab Mir’kazei.

The Mir’kazei brothers are allegedly affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran (IRGC), Iran’s most powerful armed force. The IRGC is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

Both Shahab and Yunus Mir’kazei were charged by American authorities but remain at large and are believed to be in Iran.

Pahlawan made two successful smuggling runs before being captured; one in October 2023 and the other two months later.

The dozen men he recruited to join him were all from Pakistan and had crossed the border into Iran in search of work.

The US court heard that before leaving for the December trip, the crew was tasked with loading large packages onto the boat at Chabahar on Iran’s southern coast.

After five or six days at sea, when they approached the Somali coast, the crew said that another boat approached them at night and they had to deliver the cargo.

Crew member Mehandi Hassan told the court there were about five people on the other boat speaking in a language he did not recognise.

Their journey the following month was expected to follow the same route. As before, this journey started at the small port of Konarak before heading towards Chabahar, where the crew loaded the heavy boxes onto the ship.

The packages, which the U.S. Navy later discovered, contained Iranian-made ballistic missile parts, anti-ship cruise missile components, and a warhead.

According to the crew, Pahlawan would often stay in his cabin and watch movies on his phone when he arrived at sea. Sometimes they would see Pahlawan on a second mobile (satellite phone) but they didn’t know what he was saying because he was speaking in a language they didn’t understand, Mehandi Hassan said.

On January 11, the crew said they woke up to the sound of helicopter rotors overhead and a U.S. Navy ship docking. Pahlawan came out of his cabin to tell everyone to “go ahead” and not stop the boat, telling them that the ship and the helicopters belonged to the pirates.

Armed U.S. Navy Seals and Coast Guard officers attempted to board the Dolphin. “There was a lot of chaos,” crew member Aslam Hyder told the court.

Special Warfare Officer Christopher Chambers lost control during the operation and crashed into the water; Special Warfare Officer First Class Nathan Gage Ingram also jumped into the water to save her.

Both men were so loaded with equipment that they quickly drowned, according to an internal report later. Their bodies were never found and they were pronounced dead 10 days later.

The court heard the crew remained on the Dolphin for two days before being landed on a US Navy ship, where they were split into two groups and kept in windowless containers.

Pahlawan ordered the crew to lie and say that the captain had already escaped. “He said, ‘Don’t tell them it’s me. [captain]because if you do that, I could cause you serious harm,’” Aslam Hyder told the court.

“He started threatening us… It was about family and children, that they wouldn’t know about you and you wouldn’t know what was happening to them,” he said. “Then we got very scared and kept silent.”

The crew who testified said that they were taken out of the containers one by one to be questioned. Everyone on the ship, including Pahlawan, was asked who the captain was, and Pahlawan “just ran away, lied, and hid,” according to U.S. prosecutors.

The American military said the packages found on Younis were the first Iranian-supplied weapons seized by US forces since the Houthis began attacking ships in the Red Sea several months ago.

However, Pehlavan was following a common route for smugglers carrying weapons to Yemen.

Between 2015 and 2023, US forces and their allies seized nearly 2.4 million munitions, 365 anti-tank guided missiles and more than 29,000 small arms and light weapons from small boats in the Arabian Sea, according to a UN report.

Typically, smugglers use dhows, a type of small boat often used for fishing purposes, to transport cargo near the coast of Somalia.

As in Younis, the weapons are transferred to other, smaller boats and then “smuggled to secluded beaches on Yemen’s southern coast… and from there across the desert to Houthi-controlled parts of the country,” according to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

William Freer, of the UK Geostrategy Council think tank, told BBC News that most Houthi attacks involve smaller weapons, but the components on Pehlawan’s ship are “much more complex and could have much greater impact”.

“Very quickly, most shipping companies decided to divert all their ships around South Africa wherever possible, rather than going through the Red Sea.”

This long detour adds approximately 10 to 12 days of sailing time and extra fuel to each trip. previous analysis It is estimated to cost companies an extra $1 million (£748,735) per round trip.

Mr Freer added that the impact on merchant shipping continues to this day.

“About two months after the first attacks [in October 2023]”Shipping through the Red Sea fell by about 60 percent to 70 percent and has remained at that level ever since, despite ceasefires,” he said.

Although Houthi attacks are now less frequent, he added, there are still “enough attacks to convince shipping companies that it is not worth taking the risk of returning to the Red Sea route.”

Iran is accused by the United States, Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia of smuggling missiles and other weapons to the Houthis by sea in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution since the armed group ousted Yemen’s internationally recognized government from much of northwestern Yemen 10 years ago, sparking a devastating civil war. Iran denies this.

On June 5 this year, Pahlawan was found guilty of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists; providing material support to the weapons of mass destruction program of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; conspiring and transporting explosives to the Houthis, knowing that the explosives would be used to cause harm; and threatens his crew.

“Pahlawan was not only an experienced smuggler, he knew what he was smuggling and its intended use,” prosecutors said.

In his final plea for leniency to the court, Pahlawan’s lawyer wrote that Pahlawan’s wife’s life had long been estranged from her family due to her marriage to him, and that her life and that of her child had become “extremely difficult and arduous” since his arrest.

“Since the jury verdict, Mr. Pahlawan’s sole focus in telephone conversations has been the welfare of his family,” his lawyer said. “He doesn’t talk about himself and his fate. He cries because he’s worried about what will happen to his wife and child.”

However, the court ruled that the defendant’s higher sentence was “appropriate due to the nature and circumstances of the crime and the defendant’s background and characteristics.”