Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Federal officials arrested an Iranian woman at the Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday night for allegedly brokering weapons for the Iranian regime, officials said Sunday.
(Left) Shamim Mafi is arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for allegedly trafficking arms on behalf of the Iranian regime, on April 18, 2026. (Right) Shamim Mafi. U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District Of CaliforniaShamim Mafi, 44, of Woodland Hills, California, is a green card holder, according to U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in a post on X on Sunday.
Mafi was arrested at the Los Angeles airport “for trafficking arms on behalf of the government of Iran” and was charged in connection to the alleged selling “of drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran and sold to Sudan,” he said.
“If convicted, she faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison,” Essayli wrote. “Mafi is an Iranian national who became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2016.”
She is scheduled to make her first court appearance on Monday in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, he said.
A criminal complaint filed by federal officials in connection to the case said that Mafi allegedly facilitated a contract valued at more than 60 million Euros (around $70 million) for the sale of Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drones manufactured for the regime that were commissioned to be sold to Sudan. She also coordinated a Sudanese delegation to Iran and received around $7 million in payments.
She was also accused of brokering the sale of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese Ministry of Defense, according to prosecutors, who stated that Mafi did not attempt to obtain a license from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for the sales.
“During interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Control officers and the FBI, Mafi acknowledged communicating with an officer of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security,” prosecutors said.
Mafi also allegedly told the FBI that she could provide “extensive information about the Iranian financial system and money laundering channels” that the Iranian regime uses, according to the complaint.
The arrest was made as the U.S. government increases economic pressure on Iran in the wake of a U.S.-Israeli campaign that included thousands of strikes inside the country since Feb. 28. The Trump administration, which initiated a naval blockade of Iranian ports last week, is sending a team to Pakistan Monday to hold more talks about a possible peace deal.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at a White House briefing on April 15 that the United States plans to ramp up economic pain on Iran, and said the new moves will be the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign.
Bessent said the Trump administration has “told companies, we have told countries that if you are buying Iranian oil, that if Iranian money is sitting in your banks, we are now willing to apply secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure. And the Iranians should know that this is going to be the financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.”
That same day, the Treasury Department said it placed new sanctions on an Iranian oil smuggling network, including around two-dozen individuals, companies, and vessels that were using front companies to evade previous U.S. sanctions.
It’s not clear if Mafi has legal representation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 23:25One year ago, in the immediate aftermath of Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, there was a flurry of discussion over who is more reliant on whom: the US on Chinese rare earth materials, or China on US ethane output (see "Chinese Plastics Factories Face Mass Closure As US Ethane Supply Evaporates" and "Who Blinks First? China May Exempt Tariffs On US Ethane & Other Goods"). Following the detente in the US-China trade war, that discussion was quietly relegated to the back of the line, however the time has come to bring it up again.
That's because with the Iran war choking off traditional - and crucial - supplies, China is set to import a record volume of US ethane this month as petrochemical producers desperately seek alternative feedstocks for their operations.
Shipments of US ethane are expected to rise to an all-time high of 800,000 tons in April, according to Chinese consultant JLC, which would be around 60% higher than the monthly average. Some companies can switch to using ethane, helping them offset disruptions to the supply of naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas from the Middle East after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Ethane is a natural gas liquid primarily used to produce ethylene, a key building block for plastics, and China depends almost entirely on the US for supply. The product became a political flashpoint between Beijing and Washington last year after the US tightened export controls during a bitter trade war.
Of course, this means that if Xi plays the rare earth cards in his upcoming summit with Trump, the US president can retaliate by simply shutting down China's plastics industry.
US ethane has become the preferred alternative for China’s ethylene makers due to stable supply and lower cost, said Shi Linlin, an analyst with JLC. Profits to produce ethylene from ethane was tenfold that of naphtha as of April 15, which has been inflated by crude-linked pricing, JLC said.
A ramp-up of downstream production capacity has also lead to a pickup in demand for the gas. A new ethane unit developed by Wanhua Chemical Group and a multi-feed cracker unit by Sinopec Ineos (Tianjin) Petrochemical Co., have both supported higher imports this year, Shi added.
The International Energy Agency said last week that “petrochemical feedstocks display the most immediate effects of the war by far,” and that supply chains to Asia have been thrown into “disarray.” Japan has been forced to scramble for naphtha, tapping a range of suppliers including from the US and Africa.
In February, just before the war started, more than 50% of China’s naphtha imports and over 40% of its LPG purchases originated from Persian Gulf nations, according to Chinese government data. That supply chain has now been cut off for as long as the Strait of Hormuz is blocked. And while China may have a massive 1.5 billion oil barrels in strategic petroleum storage, it has no naphta or ethane, meaning its plastic industry is suddenly very much exposed.
“The disruption around the Strait of Hormuz has really highlighted how exposed Asia is to Middle Eastern naphtha,” said Amber Liu, the head of Asia Petchem Analytics at ICIS. This year, naphtha-fed crackers have accounted for about 57% of China’s ethylene capacity, compared with 16% for ethane, she said.
China’s ethane buying spree comes ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned visit to Beijing in mid‑May, and US energy is expected to be part of the agenda. It could feature prominently if the Iran war continues to drag on.
Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 22:59The US has suspended all funding and security coordination with Iraq, and shipments of dollars the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI), until a new Baghdad government acceptable to Washington is formed, Saudi state-owned Al-Hadath reported Monday.
The US is also conditioning continued security cooperation on the disclosure of those involved in the bombing of its embassy, the news channel added.
President Trump previously with the current Prime Minister of Iraq Mohammed Shia' al-SudaniNevertheless, on Monday, the CBI released a statement rejecting the Al-Hadath report. Since 2003, a decision issued by Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer has required that all Iraqi oil revenues be paid into an account at the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York, giving the US the ability to control how many US dollars are returned to the CBI.
From that point until today, the Iraqi Ministry of Finance has had to submit funding requests to the US Treasury, which then approves or denies them based on its own criteria.
This monthly transfer of US dollars, flown into Baghdad in pallets of hard cash, determines Iraq's ability to pay for basic needs such as salaries, food, and medicine.
Whenever Washington believes that Iraq is not aligned with US regional goals, including enforcing economic sanctions on Iran, Baghdad's major trading partner and a source of natural gas for electricity production, these fund transfers can be delayed or reduced.
The Coordination Framework (CF), the largest parliamentary bloc of Shia parties, has not yet selected a prime minister nearly five months after securing a plurality in the latest elections.
Former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, viewed by the US as "close" to Iran, was initially chosen to replace incumbent Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
However, while Washington wants to replace Sudani, it also opposes Maliki's return to power.
"Last time Maliki was in power, the Country descended into poverty and total chaos. That should not be allowed to happen again," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after Maliki emerged as a candidate for prime minister in January.
"Because of his insane policies and ideologies, if elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq," he said. If we are not there to help, Iraq has ZERO chance of Success, Prosperity, or Freedom. MAKE IRAQ GREAT AGAIN!"
Maliki was the prime minister in 2014 when ISIS conquered large swathes of Iraq, including the country's second-largest city, Mosul.
Maliki received much of the blame for the loss of nearly one-third of the country's territory to ISIS, which enjoyed covert support from the US military and Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani.
The CF, which won 185 of 329 seats in the last election, must nominate a prime minister by April 26.
Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 22:35People on the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum rarely find any issue upon which they intersect and share common ground. However, both sides have an almost religious fear of data analytics company Palantir. Their reasons might be different but their reactions are similar.
On the political left, Palantir is seen as Donald Trump's data gestapo. They hate the company because it has created tools used by DHS and ICE to track down illegal immigrants using welfare and medical subsidies information. It has also been an active ally in producing strategic analysis for Israel for the war in Gaza and Lebanon. Leftists argue that Palantir is a "genocidal" corporation and a technological harbinger of "fascism".
On the other side, libertarians view Palantir as the All Seeing Eye of Sauron - A precursor to total AI surveillance of the population. They view former CEO Peter Thiel's presence in the Trump Administration as a negative influence. Other conservatives argue that the company's relationship to Israel and its ties to the Trump Administration are more proof that the Israelis run the world.
Palantir has recently posted a sort of manifesto, a list of values or principles linked to CEO Alex Karp's book "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, And The Future Of The West". Many of the ideas presented run more in line with libertarian or conservative principles, but they also deviate into areas that will surely ruffle feathers and elicit distrust. At the very least, Palantir presents a platform for debate about the future and the growing influence of digital technology on politics and war.
Because we get asked a lot.
The Technological Republic, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
2. We must rebel…
The first thing to note is that Palantir seems to be openly advocating for American exceptionalism, which, in an era of far-left multiculturalism and open borders socialism, is a positive. One could question how far the company actually wants to take this exceptionalism? Are we talking about America first, strong national borders and a defined cultural identity? These things are mentioned positively by Karp in his book.
But, there are also tinges of a dream; a dream of American empire. Again, this is a vision that is antithetical to libertarians and leftists alike, for different reasons. Leftists want to see America (and western culture in general) destroyed and replaced with a new multicultural world order. Libertarians (and some conservatives) want to see the US cut itself off completely from international affairs and foreign entanglements.
Leftists are malicious in their goals and libertarians are unrealistic in their goals, but is an American empire really the answer to disrupting and defeating the liberal cabal which is causing so much decay in the west? Once we get past our initial distaste of the concept of hegemony, the idea deserves a fair debate. We have already seen the true intentions of the progressive elites; so what should we do to stop them?
By extension, Karp in his book also addresses the inherent rot of the progressive Utopian vision and rails against DEI, woke ideology and the moral relativism of the political left. He laments the erosion of a shared American/Western identity due to multiculturalism and "deconstructionist" influences since the 1960s.
He argues, though, that the solution to this weakening of moral and cultural structures requires technological ambition and global leadership. He calls for a purposeful, unapologetic national project centered on hard power. This is not going to make woke leftists with notions of a worldwide communist system happy. It's certainly not going to inspire any approval from small government activists or anarchists.
The Lord Of The Rings comparisons and "One Ring" memes will be rampant.
Another interesting takeaway is Palantir's call for "Universal Service" instead of a volunteer military. This simply sounds like a return to the draft, though Karp's rationale suggests that universal service would also require universal risk. In other words, if the elites (along with anyone from the general population) can be sent into combat, then maybe there would be far less war in the future and far more respect for the political process.
How this would be enforced, though, is the key question. As history shows us, the elitist class has a knack for excusing itself from the risks associated with the wars they often start.
When examining Palantir's social and political concepts, one is actually reminded of the government depicted in Robert Heinlein's book "Starship Troopers", which is portrayed as almost "fascist" in the 1997 movie but is actually written by Heinlein as a limited representative democracy based on merit. In other words, only the people who participate in military service and prove their merit are allowed to be citizens, to vote and to run for public office.
This, of course, would end the idea of inherent rights. That said, there is ample evidence that some subsections of the population simply do not deserve the right to vote, because of stupidity, suicidal empathy or sheer insanity. This sounds like a shocking concept today, but make no mistake, this will be a very serious debate in the near future as the liberal order continues to lead the west into self destruction.
Finally, Palantir assigns an almost omnipotent value to Silicon Valley, AI and software's role in the future of society. From crime reduction to warfare to cultural preservation, Karp asserts that AI will save the west. This is highly questionable.
AI has proven to be a valuable tool for data analysis, but the actual industrial, social and scientific benefits have been few and far between. The research advantages are somewhat defined, but AI's greatest strength is clearly in mass surveillance and potentially in automated weaponry. These are prospects which almost no American is keen to applaud (we've all read 1984 and seen the "Terminator" films).
At bottom, Karp and his associates at Palantir might be sincere in their goal of defeating the leftist agenda and preventing the collapse of the west. But, one has to ask if the ends justify the means? Is it really possible to wield the power of a technocratic surveillance state for good? A meritocracy that encompasses the government along with the citizenry is a noble vision, but not if people's basic rights are erased in the process.
The survival of the nation cannot be the only goal. By itself, the nation is meaningless. It must be worthy of survival, and this requires Americans to stay true to the principles that founded it. Of course, when faced with an existential war in which the enemy operates from within to sabotage the society and destroy its principles through insurgency, bending the rules might also be necessary.
Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 22:10