“The paramilitary security forces purchased frame and design plans of the patrol boat “Levriero” from the Italian company FB Design in 1998. When Italian media reported this and other business deals the company has made with the Iranians, FB Design’s founder and owner, Fabio Buzzi, was surprisingly frank. “It’s true, it’s not a mystery, I sold boats and technology to the Iranians,” he told ANSA in 2008. “We regularly sold design and technology to the Iranian secret services,” he admitted. Mr. Buzzi said in the same interview that he stopped his Iran business only after U.S. officials questioned him in 2005 about his supplies to the Revolutionary Guard.
Citing Pentagon sources, Emanuele Ottolenghi writes in his 2009 book “Under a Mushroom Cloud—Europe, Iran and the Bomb,” that Iranian-made copies of the FB Design Levriero were part of the Revolutionary Guard speedboats that seemed bent on provoking a confrontation with three U.S. warships two years ago. In January 2008, in the Strait of Hormuz, these boats sailed too close to the American vessels and made threats over the radio.”
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