A Pakistani national was sentenced on Oct. 16 to 40 years in prison for charges relating to his transportation of Iranian-made advanced conventional weaponry.
On June 5, 2025, a federal jury convicted Muhammad Pahlawan of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists, providing material support and resources to Iran’s weapons of mass destruction program, providing material support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ weapons of mass destruction program, conspiring to and indeed transporting explosive devices to the Houthis knowing those explosives would be used to cause harm and threatening his crew.
According to court records and evidence presented at trial, on the night of Jan. 11, 2024, U.S. Central Command Navy forces operating from the USS LEWIS B. PULLER, including Navy SEALs and members of the U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Security Response Team East, boarded an unflagged dhow, a small vessel, in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Somalia.
The U.S. boarding team encountered 14 individual mariners on the vessel, including Pahlawan.
During a search of the dhow, the U.S. boarding team located and seized Iranian-made advanced conventional weaponry, including ballistic missile components, anti-ship cruise missile components, and a warhead.
The type of weaponry found aboard the dhow is consistent with the weaponry used by the Houthi rebel forces during the time of the charged conspiracy against merchant ships and U.S. military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
During the interdiction, Pahlawan lied to the boarding team, instructed other crewmembers to lie, and eventually threatened the lives of the crewmembers and their families.
Two Navy SEALs — Christopher Chambers and Nathan Gage Ingram — lost their lives during the interdiction.
Pahlawan’s January 2024 trip was part of a larger operation. From around August 2023 through January 2024, Pahlawan worked with two Iranian brothers, Shahab Mir’kazei, and Yunus Mir’kazei, affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to smuggle materials from Iran to other recipients, including the Houthi rebel forces in Yemen.
Pahlawan completed multiple smuggling voyages, coordinated and funded by Shahab and Yunus, by traveling with cargo from Iran to the coast of Somalia and transporting that cargo to another vessel for a nighttime ship-to-ship transfer. Pahlawan worked with Shahab and Yunus to prepare the dhow for multiple smuggling voyages, received specific coordinates from them for the ship-to-ship transfers, and received multiple payments from them for his role in the smuggling operation.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg; U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan for the Eastern District of Virginia; Assistant Director Donald M. Holstead of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division; and Assistant Director in Charge Darren B. Cox of the FBI Washington Field Office made the announcement after sentencing by U.S. District Judge David J. Novak.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy A. Edwards and Assistant U.S. Attorney Gavin R. Tisdale for the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorney Joseph N. Kaster of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section prosecuted the case. Former Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor Danya Atiyeh supported the case.
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