Iran Used A Los Angeles Suburb As An Alleged Launchpad For A $70 Million Arms Pipeline To Sudan, With Turkey Running The Money – OpEd
By Hollie McKay
She lived in Woodland Hills, drove through the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles, and held a green card issued in 2016. But when federal agents caught up with Shamim Mafi at Los Angeles International Airport on the night of April 18, she was allegedly moments from boarding a flight to Istanbul — and, prosecutors say, had spent years brokering one of the most expansive covert arms trafficking operations ever charged in a United States federal court.
According to court records, Mafi — a 44-year-old Iranian national — spent years brokering a weapons pipeline from Iran’s state military apparatus to Sudan’s Ministry of Defense, the money moving through Turkey. She is scheduled to go to trial on June 23. She has pleaded not guilty.
The case, however, raises deeper questions.
How does a suspected Iranian intelligence asset spend nearly a decade running a $70 million arms pipeline out of a Los Angeles suburb, and what does the corridor she used tell us about the true cost of Washington’s tolerance for Turkish financial opacity?
A weapons order sheet fit for a war
Court records put the centerpiece at $72.5 million — a contract for Mohajer-6 drones brokered from Iran’s Ministry of Defense to Sudan’s. Washington already knows this platform. It’s the same one turning up over Ukrainian cities.
Prosecutors also allege she arranged the sale of 500 non-guided aerial bombs, 55,000 bomb fuses, 70,000 AK-47s, 1,000 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and 500,000 rockets — alongside two ammunition deals: 10 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition and a separate proposed contract for 240 million more.
The company at the center of it was Atlas International Business LLC, registered in Oman, which prosecutors say pulled in more than $7 million in 2025 alone. The money moved the way Iranian money tends to move: through hawala networks, through banks in Dubai and Turkey, and, according to the indictment, in crates of $100 bills.
Search warrants recovered records of nearly 62 exchanges between Mafi and an officer from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security spanning two and a half years. At the airport, she apparently saw no reason to be coy about it — telling FBI agents she was “more useful to MOIS in Iran than in the United States.”
The operational template closely mirrors that of IRGC Unit 190, the clandestine logistics branch of the Quds Force responsible for international arms smuggling, whose roughly two dozen personnel use an elaborate system of front companies and shipping firms to conceal the IRGC’s fingerprint and bypass international sanctions. Its supply lines have reached Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and the Assad regime — and, the indictment now confirms in a United States courtroom, Sudan.
“This indictment lays bare Iran’s sophisticated, multi-layered sanctions evasion network using Turkish financial institutions, Omani shell companies, and IRGC-linked operatives,” explains John Thomas, managing director of Nestpoint Associates. “Turkey has become one of Tehran’s favorite conduits for circumventing United States sanctions, allowing the IRGC to arm conflicts from Sudan to Yemen with relative ease.”
Turkey as the financial spine
The indictment names Turkish banks, exchange houses, and corporate networks as the channel through which Iranian money traveled. The Financial Action Task Force had been warning about exactly that for three years — before clearing Turkey from its grey list in June 2024.
None of this is new ground. In 2019, federal prosecutors went after Halkbank, a Turkish state lender, on charges that it helped Iran quietly move $20 billion through the international financial system, oil money converted into gold and cash and routed back to Tehran. It was one of the largest sanctions cases ever brought. In March 2026, the Trump administration walked away from it — a deferred prosecution agreement, no fine, no admission of guilt. Court documents later showed the deal was part of the diplomatic quid pro quo that helped deliver the Gaza hostage ceasefire.
“Turkey’s financial system poses a systemic risk, not an isolated case,” Thomas continues. “The Halkbank case was just the tip of the iceberg. The lenient settlement sent the wrong signal that Washington is willing to prioritize short-term diplomacy over aggressive sanctions enforcement. Unless the Trump administration imposes secondary sanctions on Turkish entities involved in this alleged pipeline, Ankara will continue treating United States sanctions as optional.”
Sudan, the IRGC, and a decade-long foothold
This is where the weapons were going. Sudan is in its fourth year of a civil war, the UN has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis: 14 million people scattered from their homes, 21 million short of food, famine eating into entire regions. Since 2024, the Sudanese Armed Forces have been flying Mohajer-6 drones across the Khartoum front with notable effect.
The IRGC’s reach into that war is by now a matter of American government record. Treasury sanctioned the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade in September 2025 — more than 20,000 fighters trained and armed by the IRGC, linked to torture and summary executions of perceived opponents. The State Department designated its parent organization, the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist effective March 16.
Iran’s interest in Sudan is not new. The Conflict Observatory documented at least seven flights by Qeshm Fars Air — a carrier under United States sanctions affiliated with the IRGC’s external operations arm — between Tehran and Port Sudan in the first half of 2024 alone. The pipeline described in the indictment has, according to prosecutors, operated for more than a decade — surviving Israeli airstrikes, the Abraham Accords, and multiple rounds of Western sanctions.
“Iran is playing a long game in Africa,” Thomas explains. “Supplying advanced drones and ammunition to Sudan’s military is part of a deliberate strategy to create friendly footholds, gain access to ports and resources, and challenge Western influence across the continent.”
The indictment now places pressure on Washington to reckon with the question analysts have been raising for years. Whether Turkey’s financial system, and the leniency extended to Turkish institutions implicated in Iranian sanctions evasion, has been quietly subsidizing conflicts thousands of miles from Istanbul.
