Shamim Mafi, a 44-year-old Iranian woman was arrested at the Los Angeles airport in the United States for alleged brokering a deal of weapons, including drones and bombs, between Iran and Sudan, a country which continues to bear the brunt of a civil war.
According to news agency AP, the company Mafi operated, through which weapons and ammunition were trafficked, received over $7 million in payments in 2025.
The Iranian woman will face charges of brokering the sale of “drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition” between Iran and the Sudanese Armed Forces, First US Attorney Bill Essayli said in an X post on Sunday, in which he also shared a picture of the woman.
One of the pictures shared by Essayli showed someone in an FBI jacket escorting a woman into the back of a sedan outside a terminal at LAX, and another showed a stash of cash, with no further details. “Mafi is an Iranian national who became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2016,” Essayli further said.
According to him, Shamim Mafi faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison if convicted.
Charges against Iranian woman
Shamim Mafi is accused of aiding Iran in trafficking weapons to Sudan. According to a report by AP, Mafi and an unnamed co-conspirator operated a company in Oman called Atlas International Business to traffic arms.
Court documents show that the duo brokered the sale of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese Ministry of Defense. “In connection with the transaction, Mafi submitted a letter of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”) to purchase the bomb fuses for Sudan,” the complaint said, according to the publication.
According to a report by the New York Post, a contract for over $70 million for Iranian-made Mohajer-6 armed drones was also part of the sales. The publication also cited some phone records to suggest that the woman was in direct contact with the Iranian intelligence between December 2022 and June 2025.
Sudan recently entered its fourth year of the ongoing civil war, with no ceasefire hopes in sight. Shamim Mafi’s arrest also comes at a time when the future of the Iran-US war hangs in the balance, after one round of failed talks in Pakistan and another one possibly approaching.
The Iranian woman is reportedly scheduled to appear in US District Court in Los Angeles on Monday.
