A federal grand jury has indicted three Iranian software engineers — two of them sisters with direct ties to an Iranian regime insider — on charges of stealing trade secrets from major American technology companies, including Google, in what prosecutors describe as a systematic effort to funnel sensitive U.S. technology back to Iran.

Samaneh Ghandali, 41, her sister Soroor Ghandali, 32, and Samaneh’s husband Mohammadjavad Khosravi, 40, allegedly used their positions at unidentified U.S. tech companies to access confidential information related to processor security, cryptography, and other advanced technologies. Prosecutors say they then transferred the stolen data to outside locations, including Iran. All three have pleaded not guilty.

The family connection to the Iranian regime has drawn particular attention. The Ghandali sisters’ father, Shahabeddin Ghandali, is a former chief executive of Iran’s Teachers Investment Fund Corporation who was himself arrested in 2016 over an alleged embezzlement of $2.5 billion and fraud involving Iran’s Bank Sarmayeh, though it remains unclear whether he was ever prosecuted. Opponents of the Iranian regime in the U.S. say those ties are no coincidence.

“The issue is risk, access, and vulnerability,” said Lawdan Bazargan, an Iranian human rights activist who heads the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists. “When individuals connected to powerful networks in an authoritarian system enter universities and research centers, they gain access not only to advanced technology but also to professional networks and institutional trust. In certain cases, access can be abused.”

The case is the latest in a string of Iranian infiltration efforts targeting American institutions. In 2021, federal prosecutors charged Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi — a prominent Iranian-American political science professor who had taught at Harvard and other elite universities — with failing to register as a foreign agent of Iran. Prosecutors alleged he had secretly worked for the Iranian government and its United Nations mission for more than a decade, collecting over $250,000 from official Iranian accounts while spreading regime propaganda, lobbying members of Congress, and advising the Iranian ambassador on how to retaliate for the U.S. airstrike that killed IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani. Afrasiabi pleaded not guilty, calling himself an “agent of peace.” President Biden issued him a full pardon as part of a prisoner swap in 2023.

In another case, Iranian-American Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar pleaded guilty in 2019 to acting as a foreign agent of Iran. Prosecutors alleged he conducted surveillance on Jewish organizations and Iranian dissidents affiliated with the opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq. His brother teaches at the University of Chicago, and his father is a former head of Iran’s College Publications Center. Mohammadi-Doostdar was sentenced to just over three years in prison; a California-based co-conspirator received 30 months.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)