March 29, 2009: The U.S. is prosecuting an Iranian businessman, Hossein Ali Khoshnevisrad, and three Irish citizens, for illegally smuggling aircraft parts to Iran. For the last three decades, Iran has had to deal with embargoes that prevent it from getting spare parts for its large inventory of elderly Western weapons. Spare parts have been obtained via a smuggling network, with some of the less complex parts manufactured inside Iran. The network is under increasing assault, as the U.S., and other Western nations uncover parts of this network, and prosecute those running it.

The Khoshnevisrad network was typical, in finding a legitimate parts dealer (Mac Aviation of Ireland) that was willing, for a large fee, to falsify sales and shipping documents to hide the fact that the parts were going to end up in Iran. This was usually done by shipping the goods to Persian Gulf ports (in this case Dubai) that had a large (mostly legitimate) trade with Iran. Khoshnevisrad faces 65 years in jail, while his three Irish henchmen could get 10-20.