Iran’s $2bn sanctions-busting network exposed

While the world focuses on the battlefield, Tehran continues to wage war also through invoices, shell companies, and trucks that look as if they came from a European car lot.

By JFeed

While the United States enforces a naval blockade on Iran, Israel and America strike military installations, and Western sanctions are meant to strangle the Iranian economy, it turns out Tehran has found another way to run its war.

A way that is now being revealed, in November 2026, as far more sophisticated and effective than the Western world estimated.

A special investigation published this week by Reuters exposes the scale of a secret empire spanning continents: thousands of shell companies and fictitious entities, straw men, and bank accounts around the world continuing to funnel military equipment worth billions of dollars to the regime in the thick of the war.

This system does not settle for smuggling small components or innocent spare parts.

This is a massive procurement operation: heavy trucks manufactured in Europe, raw materials for rocket fuel, explosives, engine parts, and advanced industrial machinery.

Some of the shipments reached Iran even during the intense fighting, through trade routes by sea, air, and land, right under the West’s nose.

The investigation, based on thousands of banking documents, corporate registries, and customs and shipping data, exposed the staggering scale of the Iranian procurement network: more than 5,000 covert agencies that managed to import equipment worth at least two billion dollars from January 2025 to the present.

One of them alone, bearing the code name MOD 346428, purchased equipment worth $2.3 billion between January 2025 and June 2026, a sum rivaling the defense budgets of entire countries.

Behind the dry names and numbers lies an especially sophisticated mechanism revealing the level of Iranian planning.

The agencies are registered under the initials MOD, referring to the Iranian Defense Ministry, and many share an identical address with the Defense Ministry in Tehran.

Their official founding date is also identical: February 11, 1979, the day Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power, a symbolic date meant to camouflage.

But the documents reveal the truth: most of the entities were actually established only in 2013, precisely when Western sanctions bore down on Iran and forced it to invent creative solutions.

Trucks from Italy, launchers in Tehran

One of the most surprising details uncovered in the investigation concerns vehicles that look quite innocent, ordinary commercial trucks you could see on any European road.

Iran managed to import hundreds of Italian-made Iveco trucks, alongside thousands of Toyota vehicles, including the popular Hilux and Land Cruiser models.

But in the hands of the Iranian military, these innocent vehicles undergo a stunning metamorphosis: they become mobile platforms for concealing missile launchers and advanced weapons systems.

The documents track the sophisticated supply chain: an Iranian vehicle dealer living in Italy purchased six Iveco trucks in 2022 for 426,000 euros.

The trucks were transferred to a company in Dubai, a convenient waystation, and from there shipped to the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran.

The purchase documents bore the identification number of one of the Defense Ministry agencies, and the final destination listed was Sahara Thunder, a company under US sanctions for its involvement in manufacturing and supplying drones to Russia.

An “innocent” deal that became part of the war machine.

This was not a one-time transaction but the beginning of a method: between January 2025 and June 2026, the same Iranian agency imported 435 additional Iveco trucks.

Reuters investigators managed to locate some of them through impressive detective work, satellite imagery, online videos, and vehicle chassis numbers.

In March 2025, US Central Command released a video of a strike on a camouflaged Iranian missile launcher and the circle closed.

Experts from the British defense intelligence firm Janes identified the struck truck as an Iveco model, of the type Iran imported in large quantities.

It cannot be determined with certainty whether this was one of the trucks purchased through that agency, but the similarity dramatically demonstrates the possible military use of the “innocent” vehicles.

The trucks are only the tip of the iceberg. An entire sophisticated supply apparatus for the Iranian missile and drone industry lies behind the network of companies.

In February 2025, less than three weeks before the current war broke out, a ship arrived at Bandar Abbas port carrying 93 tons of titanium from China, a strategic metal also used for manufacturing missile bodies and engine casings.

The timing was not coincidental.

That same month, hundreds of tons of dangerous chemicals also arrived in Iran, including nitrocellulose and other materials used for manufacturing explosives and rocket fuel.

Previous shipments included hundreds more tons of chemicals from China, including materials used for manufacturing solid rocket fuel, the building blocks of the Iranian missile industry.

One of these shipments was also linked to a severe disaster: between January and April 2025, 886 tons of chemicals from China were transferred to Bandar Abbas port.

Three days after the last shipment, a fire broke out there that ended in a massive explosion on April 26. At least 70 people were killed and more than 1,200 injured.

Two sources involved in the incident’s details told Reuters the explosion was caused by ignition of sodium perchlorate in containers at the port.

Even after the war began, the blockade failed to sever the supply routes. While military imports dropped 47% in March, recovery was already recorded in May.

In June, a shipment arrived from Russia containing explosives worth $1.9 million, part of a series of Russian shipments totaling $7.6 million since early 2025.

The most sophisticated part of the Iranian mechanism is actually in the financial realm. According to the shipping data examined by Reuters, 97% of the transactions involved no international currency transfer.

Instead of transferring funds from Iran to suppliers, network operatives used money held in foreign bank accounts, including from revenues from illegal oil sales.

Straw men and foreign companies purchased the equipment and shipped it to Iran, without the money needing to cross borders in a way that might arouse suspicion.

Some of the funds passed through Iran’s Sepah Bank, which handles, among other things, salary and pension payments for Revolutionary Guards personnel.

Examination of the accounts revealed that 36 of the agencies held foreign currency balances totaling $1.2 billion at the end of 2024, and the rest of the network had about $1.8 billion in local currency.

The network is linked to the Revolutionary Guards, to economic foundations controlled by regime cronies, and to senior officials involved in the missile and drone industry.

Among other things, documents were exposed indicating fund transfers to finance Revolutionary Guards structures, including funds transferred through Defense Ministry agencies.

The documents indicate the goods did not come only from China and Russia.

Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of trucks, aircraft engine components, and advanced electronic equipment were recorded as imported from Germany and other European Union countries, even though the EU imposed sanctions on the Iranian Defense Ministry.

The United Arab Emirates also appears in the import data: since the war broke out, goods worth $27 million passing through its ports were recorded.

The world imposes sanctions; Iran finds new routes.

In Washington, they insisted in response to the investigation that American sanctions cut off the regime’s economic oxygen lines and that the United States is ahead of Iran in its attempts to circumvent the restrictions.

In Tehran, by contrast, there was no response to Reuters‘ inquiries.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, formerly a senior official at the US Treasury Department who was involved in formulating sanctions against Iran, defined the network as “the regime’s military lifeline.”

According to him, this is an entire system enabling the Iranian military to continue trading, purchasing, and arming even under heavy international pressure.

The investigation presents a disturbing picture: behind the bombed installations, the intercepted ships, and the declared sanctions, an entire international system operates that manages to adapt, switch routes, and continue funneling equipment to the Iranian weapons industry.

While the world focuses on the battlefield, Tehran continues to wage war also through invoices, shell companies, and trucks that look as if they came from a European car lot.

This exposure has critical significance in these days. Since the war with Iran ended, a change is noticeable in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s approach to the burning issue.

Anyone following his statements will notice that the prime minister no longer speaks in terms of “strikes” or “destruction” of this or that program.

Israel’s new approach under the Netanyahu government is comprehensive and holistic: toppling the regime.

The better we understand where the regime’s money comes from, the easier it will be for Israel and the United States to act to topple it—in the hope that Trump will soon wake from the nightmare of the midterm elections.

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