The arm of U.S. enforcement can reach over decades and thousands of miles to grab foreign citizens who have never set foot in the United States in order to throw them in U.S. prisons. Last week, Reza Dindar, who had been arrested in July 2025 and extradited in April 2026 from Panama, was sentenced to 18 months in a U.S. prison for illegal exports made in 2011 and 2012. According to the indictment, Dindar, who was working for a company in China, ordered from a U.S. company a “Military Sonar System, Part Number S3160-06” classified as ECCN 6A991. He represented that the part was destined for China when in fact it was exported to Iran.
There are a number of odd things about this case. First, if the item was military sonar it would be USML Category XI(a) not ECCN 6A991. Of course, this would mean that the U.S. company could not even have exported the item to China and would itself have potentially committed a violation. It looks like this was a bit of the prosecution having its cake and eating too: it gets to charge a serious military export without having to bring the hammer down on the U.S. exporter.
Second, the exports occurred in 2011 and 2012. The sealed indictment was issued in 2014 (and was not unsealed until after Dindar’s extradition). Yet Dindar was not arrested until July 2025. This kind of delay in arrest and trial can be justified if Dindar was a fugitive. But according to the defendant’s sentencing memo, he was not.
It is also important to note that the approximately ten years between the August 13, 2014,
indictment and Mr. Dindar’s July 21, 2025, arrest does not reflect flight or evasion. During that entire period, Mr. Dindar did not live in hiding and did not confine himself to non-extradition jurisdictions. To the contrary, he traveled openly to more than twenty countries—frequently with his wife and young son—using his true identity. Around 2012, he even applied for a United States visa on his Iranian passport (his only passport at the time)—conduct fundamentally inconsistent with someone attempting to flee from prosecution.
There is certainly an argument, based on United States v. Mendoza, 530 F.3d 758 (9th Cir. 2008) that the delay violated his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. In Mendoza, the Ninth Circuit found a speedy-trial violation where roughly ten years elapsed between indictment and trial, the defendant did not know he had been indicted, and the government made no serious effort to find him. Here, more than ten years elapsed between indictment and Dindar’s arrest, the indictment remained sealed, there is no evidence that Dindar knew about it, and the public filings reveal no effort by the U.S. government to find him—even though his 2012 application for a U.S. visa would seemingly have made that easier.
Third, and most interestingly, there appears to be significant information about Mr. Dindar not revealed in any of the documents filed in the case. The sentencing memoranda by both the prosecution and Mr. Dindar recommended an 18-month sentence, which the judge ultimately imposed. The defendant’s memorandum told a tale of woe not disputed by the prosecution in any respect: Dindar grew up in poverty, he was supporting his illiterate parents, he was driving a taxi for extra income, he was only paid $500 a month for managing the company in China that engaged in the illegal exports and then we have the icing on the cake:
[Mr. Dindar left the Chinese company] before the charged conspiracy period had even closed—and turned to lawful grain trading, importing grain to Iran via the Caspian corridor, motivated in part by his own experience of hunger and poverty and a desire to help feed people in his country.
Except maybe not so much. Don’t dab those tears off your cheek yet. Look at this: it is a January 13, 2025 payment agreement which shows Mr. Dindar personally undertaking, jointly with a Hong Kong company, to repay a $126 million debt from a 2024 Iranian oil shipment using proceeds from another cargo—approximately 1.9 million barrels to be loaded onto MT Uranus at Kharg Island. That will drive Mr. Dindar’s taxi for quite some time!
The MT Uranus, under an earlier name, had been identified by OFAC in September 2024 in connection with the shadow fleet used by Iran to transport oil in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Curiouser still, the prosecution’s sentencing memorandum dated September 17, 2026, more than eighteen months after that payment undertaking, describes Mr. Dindar’s history and characteristics as “largely mitigating,” but says nothing about his documented undertaking to repay a $126 million Iranian oil debt.
Something odd is going on here, and I’ll let you speculate what it is. But I’ll give you a hint as to what I think: it would make a great series on Netflix.