By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, July 13 (Reuters) - An Iranian-born engineer was convicted on Monday of U.S. charges that he conspired to illegally export technology with potential application in military drones to a company in Iran whose customers included the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Mahdi Sadeghi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen and resident of Natick, Massachusetts who had worked at Analog Devices prior to his December 2024 arrest, was found guilty by a federal jury in Boston on three counts,
including conspiracy to export technology to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.
The jury found Sadeghi not guilty on two other counts alleging violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani scheduled his sentencing for October 13.
Sadeghi's lawyers declined to comment. They had argued at trial that he was innocent and had no reason to risk his career and the life he had built in the United States by breaking the law.
Prosecutors charged Sadeghi alongside an Iranian businessman they say ran a company that made a navigation system used in Iran's military drones, including one that struck a U.S. outpost in Jordan in January 2024. The attack by Iran-backed militants killed three U.S. service members and wounded over 40 others.
The businessman, Mohammad Abedini, was arrested in Italy at the request of the U.S. government but was released in January 2025 after Iran detained an Italian journalist, who was also freed later, in an incident that drew international attention.
Sadeghi, 43, proceeded to trial alone on charges against him, none of which concerned the attack in Jordan. The judge overseeing the case barred prosecutors from introducing evidence about the Jordan incident at his trial to avoid "unfair prejudice."
Instead, the case focused on what prosecutors said were Sadeghi's efforts to illegally procure and export technology, particularly sensors, from Analog Devices to Abedini's Iran-based company, San'at Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak Co, or SDRA, which made the navigation system.
Prosecutors said that at Sadeghi's recommendation, Analog Devices began working with a Swiss-based company that Abedini founded in 2019 and shipped it electronic parts, unaware it would funnel the Massachusetts-based global semiconductor company's technology to Iran.
Defense lawyers argued that all the business dealings were legitimate and transparent, and that Abedini's Swiss company was a genuine firm focused on motion tracking technology rather than the "fake front" prosecutors portrayed.
Sadeghi's trial had been delayed for several months out of concern about picking an impartial jury after the war in Iran began. Defense attorney Daniel Marx in his opening statement on June 23 had pressed jurors "to judge Mr. Sadeghi based on the evidence in this courtroom, not what is going on in the rest of the world."
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
