Iranupdated 1h ago2 min read
Iran Uses 5,000 Agencies To Import $2 Billion In Military Hardware Despite US Blockade
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Iran operates a secret network of over 5,000 agencies linked to the Defense Ministry. This network enabled about $2 billion in imported military hardware despite sanctions.
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Secret agencies import billions
Iran has used a military-financial complex of more than 5,000 agencies to import at least $2 billion in hardware, explosives and heavy-duty trucks since January 2025, evading the US naval blockade and Western sanctions. The agencies are hidden behind names starting with the letters MOD, for the Ministry of Defense, and their financial footprints appear on bills of lading and other shipping data dating back to 2016. A single agency, MOD 346428, imported huge quantities of rocket propellants, explosives and weapons components critical for drones and missiles, as well as heavy-duty trucks that can serve as missile launchers, in the 18 months from January 2025 to June 2026.
The hardware came into Iran by land, sea and air, with much of it recorded as originating in China, Russia and Germany. Miad Maleki, a former senior official at the US Treasury Department who helped design the American sanctions program, said, "What you have here is the regime's military lifeline during this conflict and for many years before it."
How the network works
The secret agencies share the same Tehran address as Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, or MODAFL, and they list their incorporation date as February 11, 1979. Most of the agencies were actually established in 2013, as Iran struggled under sanctions that saw its crude exports and currency plunge. The agencies form the backbone of Iran’s military procurement and sanctions evasion apparatus, operating a web of frontmen and foreign shell companies known as trustees that use proceeds from illicit oil sales to buy goods for the Islamic Republic.
Phone numbers registered to 91 of the agencies also appear in records from state-run Bank Sepah of IRGC personnel with accounts there. A Treasury Department spokeswoman said the United States “has severed the regime’s economic lifelines,” adding, “we are always 10 steps ahead,” in a statement responding to the Reuters findings.
Sanctions evasion and stakes
No evidence exists that any of the numbered agencies referenced in the documents have been designated by Western governments, despite Iran’s military being under multiple US sanctions for decades. The investigation cross-checked a portion of some 19,000 import records using shipping documents, footage from social media, and state media reports. The weapons import network provided many of the raw materials Iran needs to make missiles and drones, and those munitions are responsible for Iran’s precision attacks against Gulf energy infrastructure.
The investigation offered a window into one of the war’s great mysteries: how the IRGC is replenishing its missile and drone arsenals while firing them in their thousands. Miad Maleki said, "This is the complete ecosystem of the Iranian military’s trade business," describing the network as a system that sustains Iran’s military procurement and sanctions evasion.