May 13, 2016
Federal prosecutors in San Diego have very quietly dismissed a five-year-old indictment against an Iranian-born scientist accused of breaking the embargo on exports to Iran.
The dismissal should not, however, be taken as an indication the US government has decided to abandon such cases now that many sanctions have been lifted. Instead, the case is an outlier and many people were surprised the charges were even filed to begin with since Mohammad Reza Nazemzadeh was sending medical equipment to Iran, something that is legal to begin with, and made no effort to hide that the destination was Iran.
Nazemzadeh’s case may be unique. He was indicted for trying to purchase and send to Iran in 2011 a single refurbished coil for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI, machine, a medical device—without getting a license from the government
A license was a requirement under the rules in place at the time, but the government readily issued them for medical equipment. And last fall, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the Treasury Department added MRI machines to the list of items exportable to Iran without a license.
Nazemzadeh’s lawyer said that after the OFAC decision last fall, prosecutors indicated they would not pursue the case.
“The legal landscape, and the political climate, had changed since this case was filed,” Shereen Charlick, a federal public defender, told the San Diego Union. “I’m thrilled for my client, and grateful that government believed this was the right thing to do.”
The 38-year-old Nazem-zadeh was working in Michigan as a research scientist when he corresponded with Sound Imaging, a San Diego MRI supplier, to buy and ship the coil to a hospital in Iran. Nazemzadeh didn’t try to hide the fact that the coil was going to Iran.
A worker at the San Diego company reported the contact to federal investigators, who used an undercover investigator to complete the negotiations. Nazemzadeh was indicted in late 2011 and arrested in January 2012, but has been free on bond since.
He was scheduled to have a pretrial hearing last Friday and go to trial in San Diego federal court next month.
Charlick said Nazemzadeh has continued his research at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where his work involves entering MRI results of epilepsy patients into a computer program he created that helps doctors determine if surgery is needed.
He emigrated permanently to the US in 2010 after doing his Ph.D. thesis work in Iran.
Erich Ferrari, a lawyer in Washington, DC, who specializes in sanctions cases, told the San Diego Union the OFAC decision to add MRIs to the allowed list of items was not a result of the July 2015 nuclear agreement. He said OFAC has gradually added items to the list each year, “and that’s what happened here.”
He said, “I don’t think we are now going to see a wave of these cases being dismissed. The people who are being prosecuted under the sanctions, some of them were involved in egregious conduct.”
A Los Angeles lawyer specializing in sanctions law said he hasn’t seen any indication prosecutors are preparing to let up on sanctions cases.
“The Obama Administration is under a microscope for any of its dealings with Iran,” he said. As a result, any decision to abandon cases more controversial than Nazemzadeh’s would be highly scrutinized.