Iran Rearms Through 5,000 Numbered Buyers No Western Sanctions List Names

A Reuters investigation traces $2 billion in wartime imports, from Chinese rocket-fuel chemicals to Russian detonators, to Iranian military buyers that no Western government appears to have designated. One of their customers supplies drones to Russia.

Iran's 5,000-plus numbered military agencies show why factory strikes alone are unlikely to hold down its missile and drone output for long. Reuters, working with the Israeli-American risk consultancy 240 Analytics, disclosed on October 29 a procurement network that has imported at least $2 billion in hardware, explosives and heavy-duty trucks since January 2025, evading Western sanctions and the US naval blockade. The agencies share the Tehran address of the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, MODAFL. Reuters found no evidence that any numbered agency referenced in its documents had been designated by Western governments.

A Treasury spokeswoman responded that Washington "has severed the regime's economic lifelines" and remains "always 10 steps ahead."

MOD 346428 and the trustees

The network pays suppliers without routinely moving money across borders. In the import records Reuters reviewed, 97% of shipments settled "without currency transfer." Frontmen and foreign shell companies, known as trustees, spend illicit oil proceeds held abroad. Most agencies were established in 2013, although they list February 11, 1979, as their incorporation date.

Reuters cross-checked part of roughly 19,000 import records. Phone numbers belonging to 91 agencies also appeared in Bank Sepah records for IRGC personnel. Bank records showed 36 agencies held foreign-exchange accounts containing $1.2 billion at the end of 2024.

ImportGenius records put one buyer, MOD 346428, at $2.3 billion in military imports between January 2025 and June 2026. Former OFAC associate director Miad Maleki called the network "the regime's military lifeline during this conflict and for many years before."

The buying did not stop when the US-Israeli war began on February 28. Monthly import value fell 47% to $54 million in March, then climbed back to $77 million by May, according to the import data. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had declared on September 30 that US forces destroyed Iran's "military industrial capacity." The supply records describe a buyer that kept shopping through the strikes.