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

An arms smuggler who used a fishing boat to ship ballistic missile parts from Iran to Houthi rebels in Yemen has been sentenced to 40 years in a US prison.

Pakistani national Muhammad Pahlawan was arrested during a US military operation in the Arabian Sea in January 2024 – during which two US Navy SEALs drowned.

The Pahlawan crew testified that they were tricked into participating, after thinking they were working as fishermen.

The Houthis launched sustained missile and drone attacks on Israel at the time, targeting international commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they were working to support the residents of Gaza. Iran consistently denies arming the Houthis.

Detailed testimony given by the crew in a Virginia court provides a rare look inside a smuggling operation that helped carry out the attacks.

US federal prosecutors said after his trial that the components found on the stunt boat were “some of the most advanced weapons systems that Iran has transferred to other terrorist groups.”

The 49-year-old was sentenced on Thursday, after previously being convicted of five charges, including terrorism offenses and transporting weapons of mass destruction.

The sentences on two of the five counts will run concurrently for 240 months, or 20 years, court documents show. The other three numbers, another 20 years, will continue consecutively – making a total of 480 months, or 40 years.

The eight crew members who testified in court said they had no idea what was inside the large packages on board the boat, called the Yunus.

A crew member said that when he asked Pahlawan about this, he was told to mind his own business.

But Bahlawan knew how dangerous the shipment was.

He referred to himself as a “dead person” in text messages exchanged with his wife, sent in the days leading up to the January 2024 flight that led to his arrest.

“Just pray so [we] The message, which was used as evidence in court, said: “Return safe.”

I asked him: “Why are you talking like that? He may or may not come back.”

Bahlawan said to her: This is the nature of the work, my dear, this is the nature of the work.

His last words to her before sailing were: “Keep me in your prayers. May God take me there safe and bring me back safe, all right. Pray.”

For the trip, Pahlawan was paid 1,400 million riyals (£25,200; US$33,274) – a large fee that the prosecution described at his trial as “danger money”.

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

She added that the Mirkazi brothers are allegedly affiliated with the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful armed force in Iran. The United States classifies the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization.

The US authorities have brought charges against both Shehab and Younis Mirkazi, but they are still at large and are believed to be in Iran.

Pahlawan made two successful smuggling trips before his arrest, one in October 2023, and the second two months later.

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

Before embarking on the December voyage, the US court heard that the crew had been tasked with loading large packages onto the boat in Chabahar on the southern coast of Iran.

Then, after five or six days at sea, when they were close to the coast of Somalia, the crew described another boat pulling up alongside them at night and having to deliver the cargo.

Crew member Mohannadi Hassan told the court that there were about five men on the other boat, and they were speaking a language he did not know.

Their next trip, the following month, was expected to follow the same route. As before, the journey began from the small port of Konarak before sailing to Chabahar, where the crew was forced to load heavy boxes onto the ship.

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

Once at sea, Pahlawan kept to himself, according to crew testimony, often staying in his cabin and watching movies on his phone. Mohandi Hassan said that sometimes they would see Tahlawan on another mobile phone – a satellite phone – but they did not know what he was saying, because he was speaking in a language they did not understand.

On January 11, the crew said they woke up to the sound of helicopters flying overhead and a US Navy ship driving alongside them. An acrobat came out of his cabin to tell everyone to “keep going” and not to stop the boat, telling them that the ship and helicopters belonged to pirates.

Armed US Navy and Coast Guard officers attempted to board the Yunus. “There was a lot of commotion,” Aslam Haider, a crew member, told the court.

Special Warfare Officer Christopher Chambers lost his grip and fell into the water during the operation — and Special Warfare Officer First Class Nathan Gage Ingram jumped in to try to rescue him.

The two men were so loaded with equipment that they quickly sank, an internal report later revealed. Their bodies were never found, and they were pronounced dead 10 days later.

The crew remained on board the Yunus for two days before they were lowered onto a US Navy ship, the court heard, where they were separated into two groups and held in windowless containers.

Pahlawan ordered the crew to lie and say that the captain had already fled. He said: “Don’t tell them it’s me.” [captain]“Because I can cause you serious harm if you do that,” Aslam Haider told the court.

He added: “He started threatening us… It was about the family and the children, and that they would not know about you and you would not know what happened to them.” “Then we got so scared we became quiet.”

The crew members who gave evidence said they were removed one by one from the containers for individual questioning. Everyone on board – including Pahlawan – was asked about the captain’s identity, and according to US prosecutors, Pahlawan “simply ran away, lied and hid.”

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

But Bahlawan was following a common route for smugglers carrying weapons destined for Yemen.

Between 2015 and 2023, US forces and their allies seized nearly 2.4 million pieces of ammunition, 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 for fishing, to transport goods near the coast of Somalia.

As with Younis, here the weapons are transferred to other, smaller boats, which then sail to “isolated beaches off the southern coast of Yemen… where they are then smuggled across the desert into Houthi-controlled areas of the country,” the UNODC report said.

William Freer, of the UK’s Research Council for Geostrategy, told BBC News that while most Houthi attacks have used smaller weapons, the components on board the Pahlawan ship are “much more complex and could contain much more power”.

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

This long detour adds about 10 to 12 days of sailing time per trip, and additional fuel, which Previous analysis It is estimated that it costs companies around $1 million extra (£748,735) per round trip.

The impact on commercial shipping continues to this day, Mr Freer added.

“Within approximately two months of the initial attacks [in October 2023]“Transshipment through the Red Sea declined by about 60% to 70%, and has remained at that level ever since, even with the ceasefire,” he told us.

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

The US, UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of smuggling missiles and other weapons to the Houthis by sea, in violation of a UN Security Council resolution since the armed group ousted Yemen’s internationally recognized government from much of northwest Yemen 10 years ago, sparking a devastating civil war. Iran denies this.

On June 5 of this year, Bahlawan was convicted of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists; providing material support to the IRGC’s weapons of mass destruction program; Conspiring with the Houthis and transferring explosive devices to them, knowing that these explosives will be used to cause harm; And threatening his crew

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

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

“Since the jury’s verdict, Mr. Pahlawan’s sole focus in their phone conversations has been the safety of his family,” his attorney said. “He doesn’t talk about himself or his fate. He cries, worried about what will happen to his wife and child.”

But the court ruled that the high sentence imposed on him was “appropriate given the nature and circumstances of the crime and the history and characteristics of the accused.”