Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating
What would happen if enemy shadows enveloped an air traffic control system in a major U.S. city?
How do we protect our country from unfriendly foreign entities working against us within our country? Sometimes the most dangerous actors don’t slip across borders under cover of night; they walk through the front doors of federal buildings wearing ID badges. And they work in places that give them stunning capabilities to do harm.
Abouzar Rahmati, a former contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), was in that position until he was indicted last fall. A naturalized U.S. citizen living in Great Falls, Virginia, Rahmati was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Iranian government, part of a long-running intelligence operation that spanned from 2017 to 2024.
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Officials from the Justice Department painted a frightening image of Rahmati’s activities. Behind the bland title of “contractor,” they said, hid a man passing sensitive, potentially crippling information about U.S. airports, air traffic control systems, and solar energy infrastructure directly to the Islamic Republic of Iran. He conspired with Iranian officials and intelligence operatives to be their agent inside the United States, and crafted a cover story to hide his conduct.
At work, he seemed “normal,” one former coworker told me. “I thought he had sort of a boring background.”
Federal officials found otherwise.
According to the indictment, Rahmati had served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an Iranian military and counterintelligence organization. After being discharged, he lied to the United States government about his past in order to, among other things, get hired by a U.S. government contractor.
Rahmati secured a role at a U.S. firm retained by the Federal Aviation Administration, working on the electrical and power systems that support the FAA’s National Airspace System. As part of his efforts, the DOJ said, Rahmati sent his secret bosses a trove of information relating to solar energy, solar panels, the FAA, U.S. airports, and U.S. air traffic control towers.
The potential threat to the U.S. is enormous.
Tehran’s conventional war machine might not be up to the task of launching a direct assault on the United States; but Iran’s true battlefield has never been conventional. For decades, the Islamic Republic has waged an invisible war through proxies, paramilitary networks, and terrorist cells operating in the shadows.
What would happen if enemy shadows enveloped an air traffic control system in a major U.S. city? Even if the system went dark for just a short period, the result would be chaos. Flights grounded. Aircraft in the sky with no guidance. Emergency landings. Panic. Lawsuits. That’s not science fiction. It’s asymmetric warfare, 21st-century style.
I won’t list the various scenarios my cyber security sources gave me, because I don’t want to run the risk of spreading evil ideas. The underlying theme, though, is this. The Rahmati case should sound alarm bells across U.S. government departments that may not typically view themselves as targets for state-sponsored intelligence collection. Security managers must pay attention to those alarms, and take a hard look at their insider threat programs.
Rahmati was caught. He pleaded guilty in April to illegally acting as an agent for the government of Iran. He will be sentenced in August. But his prosecution doesn’t end neatly. It’s not just about espionage; it’s also a case study in how insider threats walk through the front door.
Rahmati acted within a system that failed to detect him. He exploited vulnerabilities that could be breached elsewhere. His betrayal should be dissected. studied. Learned from. The next traitor might already be on the inside, badge on a lanyard, eyes scanning for the next system to breach.
Next time, the consequences might reach beyond a courtroom. And they might begin with smoke rising from a runway.
Susan Katz Keating is the publisher and editor in chief at Soldier of Fortune.
