Former FAA contractor sentenced for acting as agent of Iranian government

A former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contractor from Virginia was sentenced to one year in federal prison for acting as an illegal agent of the Iranian government in the United States, according to prosecutors.

Abouzar Rahmati, 43, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Great Falls, Virginia, pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy and acting as an agent of Iran without prior notification and to conspiracy to do so, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Prosecutors said Rahmati, a former contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), worked with Iranian officials and intelligence operatives from at least December 2017 through June 2024.

Rahmati traveled to Iran to meet with intelligence officers, used a cover story to conceal his contacts, obtained employment with an FAA contractor to access non-public information about the U.S. aviation sector, and gathered both open-source and non-public materials about the U.S. solar energy industry for Iranian officials.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel Wierzbicki said Rahmati exploited his position to obtain sensitive aviation data and share it with Iran.

Court records show Rahmati first offered his services in 2017 through a senior Iranian government official he knew from university. After meeting with intelligence operatives in Tehran that December, he agreed to supply information about the U.S. solar industry and to communicate under an academic cover.

In early 2018, Rahmati began providing materials about solar energy to Iranian officials. He later used his FAA contracting role to download at least 172 gigabytes of company files, which he carried to Iran in April 2022. Prosecutors said he then gave sensitive documents to Iranian officials, who offered financial incentives in exchange for more information and technology.

That same month, Rahmati sent additional information on solar energy, solar panels, the FAA, airports, and air traffic control towers to his brother in Iran to pass along to intelligence officers.

“By secretly doing the bidding of the Iranian government, Mr. Rahmati violated the trust placed in him as a U.S. citizen and as a federal contractor with access to sensitive information,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said.

In addition to the one-year prison term, Rahmati was ordered to serve three years of supervised release. The case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with assistance from the FAA’s Office of Counterintelligence and Technical Operations.