Treason – At Home, at Work, and in the Shipping Department

Treason takes many forms, and a recent case in the news shows that it can come through normal-looking business transactions, through regular domestic and international purchases and sales.

John F. Di Leo | June 8, 2026

The basic definition is easy enough: giving aid and comfort to the enemy. 

But what does that really mean, in practice? 

It can mean a government employee or a friend of a government employee, spying on our government officials and reporting back to his foreign masters, as so many people have been caught doing in recent years, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) driver, Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-CA) girlfriend, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D-NY) deputy chief diversity officer. 

Such stories make the news, more often than one would expect, but there’s an even bigger kind of treason out there, and this one takes place through normal-looking business transactions, through regular domestic and international purchases and sales, in almost the full view of regulators, with only a few small but critical aspects kept secret. 

Such a case hit the news this week, as an Iranian-American businessman named Jamshid Ghomi was revealed to have used his business dealings to route forbidden technology to the Iranian military for the past ten years, often with the unwitting help of unrelated American suppliers who had no idea where their products were really being shipped. 

Ghomi is a successful businessman, living in a $35 million California mansion; you might think he’d be grateful enough to our American system to obey our laws. But he also owns an Iran-based computer company, Faraz Pardaz Rayaneh Co. Ltd., and used his U.S. business interests to arrange disguised transactions, buying goods that are not allowed to be transferred to Iran, and using additional middlemen in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere to deliver them to the Iranian military over at least a fifteen-year period. 

His U.S. vendors were obligated by law to keep these goods out of Iran’s clutches, but American businesses are often unaware of their full obligations in this regard, or simply don’t realize the severity of the matter.   

The currency of modern warfare is technology itself; wars are won not by flooding the battlefields with more infantry, but by commanding the skies with missiles, drones, bunker-buster bombs, and potentially even nuclear warheads.  The United States of America possess the most powerful military on earth, but only as long as our most cutting-edge technology remains secret.  It is critical that we all ensure that such knowledge is not transferred to terrorists, sponsors of terror, and other rogue states. 

There is an entire field of business law covering this arena, generally known as the U.S. Export Controls, which apply to all American individuals, organizations, and businesses, and apply also to all goods and technology made or sold by Americans, not just on the first transaction, but throughout the life of the goods.  It is an over-arching, omnipresent body of law. 

Different aspects of the U.S. Export Controls are administered by different branches of the government; Treasury, War, Commerce, State, Justice, and........

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