5 years for Iranian weapons smuggler

A man accused of trying to buy U.S. weapons for Iran is sentenced to prison in a Delaware court.

An Iranian man who admitted to trying to buy U.S. weapons for resale to the nation of Iran will spend five years in prison after being sentenced Monday in a Delaware court.

Amir Hossein Ardebili was arrested in 2007 in the nation of Georgia after negotiating for parts with what he thought were arms dealers.  They were actually undercover U.S. federal agents who’d been operating a fake storefront in Philadelphia that Ardebili had contacted to purchase weapons.

He was brought back to the U.S. in January of 2008 and admitted his guilt in federal court in Delaware in May of that year.  The trial was brought under Delaware’s jurisdiction because Ardebili transferred money to a bank in the state to pay for the weapons he was trying to buy.

The indictment and guilty plea were sealed because investigators were following up on leads from Ardebili’s laptop computer, which contained details of his contacts with other arms dealers.  Investigators wouldn’t describe what leads had been created from the information on that computer.