Iranian Pleads Guilty to Smuggling Military Radios to His Homeland

An Encino man who was a multimillionaire architect to the Shah in his native Iran before fleeing the country pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to illegally export $4 million in military radios and spare parts to his homeland.

Khosrow Shakib, 43, paused twice to regain his composure as he confessed to a federal judge that he and several others conspired in 1983 and 1984 to smuggle 2,000 portable radios and components for more units into Iran. The guilty plea came after less than an hour of testimony in Shakib’s trial.

Shakib told U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler that he knew exporting the AN-PRC-77 radios and parts, usually manufactured for the U.S. Army, without a license was against U.S. law, but that he continued to negotiate the deal anyway.

Shakib’s attorney, Sherwin C. Edelberg, said his client schemed to export the equipment so that he could recover some of the millions of dollars he lost when he fled Iran after the fall of the Shah.

“It was not a matter of greed,” Edelberg said after the proceedings. “He was the head of the family, he had familial obligations. He was trying to get back what was his.”

Shakib faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine when he is sentenced Sept. 8.

Once Faced Firing Squad

Shakib, who helps his brother run a cabinet-making business in Encino, had to flee Iran after he was persecuted by revolutionary forces of Ayatollah Khomeini after the fall of the Shah, Edelberg told the court Thursday.

Branded as a Zionist and loyalist to the Shah, Shakib once was forced by Khomeini supporters to stand against a wall and face a firing squad, the defense attorney said. Shakib had no reason to want to help the Khomeini regime by shipping radios to Iran, he said.

Outside the courtroom, Edelberg said Shakib escaped Iran with the help of a friend, leaving behind “an architectural empire” worth $50 million.

Shakib admitted that he acted as a middleman between an Iranian national and a U.S. electronic parts supplier. The conspirators were accused of smuggling the radios and parts into Iran by mislabeling them as telephone equipment and shipping them through Canada to a West German company owned by Hormoz Hezar, 51, of Beverly Hills.

Hezar pleaded guilty earlier this month and faces a maximum nine-year prison term when he is sentenced in November, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeffrey Modisett said.

The conspirators were able to make 12 partial shipments, and about 50 complete radios and about $500,000 worth of parts arrived in Iran before U.S. Customs Service agents, cooperating with Canadian police, put a stop to the operation.

Prosecution witness Steven Sanett, owner of Aero Electronics, had testified Wednesday that he, Shakib and others met several times during 1983 to discuss the sale of the radio parts to Iran, which has been at war with Iraq since 1980.

Sanett and two of his employees who participated in the conspiracy were given sentences ranging from two years in prison to probation in exchange for their testimony.

Prosecutors planned to introduce evidence that Shakib, Hezar and others also negotiated for military reconnaissance cameras, radar tubes, tank engines and other military equipment to illegally export to Iran, according to a government brief.

Stotler told Shakib that there was a chance that he could be deported as a result of the guilty plea. But Edelberg said his client could not return to Iran and survive.