Two charged over Iran drone strike that killed three US troops in Jordan

Two men have been charged with exporting sensitive technology to Iran that is believed to have been used in a drone attack in Jordan this year that killed three American troops and injured dozens, the US Justice Department said on Monday.

The case, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, accuses the men – identified as Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi and Mohammad Abedininajafabadi – of export control violations.

Prosecutors say Mr Sadeghi works at a Massachusetts-based semiconductor company, and Mr Abedininajafabadi was arrested in Italy as the Justice Department seeks his extradition to Massachusetts, ABC reported.

US officials blamed the January attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah.

Three soldiers from the state of Georgia – Sgt William Jerome Rivers, Sgt Breonna Moffett and Sgt Kennedy Sanders – were killed in the January 28 attack on a US outpost in north-eastern Jordan called Tower 22.

In the attack, the kamikaze drone may have been mistaken for a US drone that was expected to return to the logistics base about the same time and was not shot down. It crashed into living quarters, killing the three soldiers and injuring more than 40.

Tower 22 – between Jordan and Syria, about 10km from the Iraqi border – was hosting about 350 US military personnel at the time. In the months after the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, and Israel’s ensuing campaign in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias intensified their attacks on US military sites in the region.

After the attack, the US launched a counterstrike on 85 sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iran-backed militias and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.