How Russia and Iran moved detonators past sanctions and a naval blockade

Russia completed at least five shipments of detonators to Iran starting in January 2025, worth $7.6 million, routing them through a network of companies built specifically to bypass international sanctions, according to a Reuters investigation.

The detonator transfers are the concrete end of a much larger pipeline. A separate Reuters investigation found that Iran has used a secret network of more than 5,000 military agencies to import at least $2 billion in equipment, explosives and heavy-duty trucks since January 2025, moving goods past Western sanctions and a US naval blockade.

One agency alone, identified as MOD 346428, imported $2.3 billion in military-related goods between January 2025 and June 2026, according to shipping records examined by Reuters. The goods were recorded as originating in China, Russia, Germany and other countries. They included rocket fuel ingredients, explosives, aircraft parts, industrial machinery and hundreds of heavy-duty trucks that could be adapted for military use.

The two findings are separate: the $7.6 million in detonators is not part of the $2 billion import figure. Together they describe a system, not a single transaction. Two heavily sanctioned states moved military material through deliberately opaque corporate structures, and the paperwork recorded the goods as coming from third countries.

The timing matters. Iran continued to obtain materials used in missile and drone production during the US-Israeli war that began in February, despite attacks on its weapons production facilities. The imports did not stop when the bombing started.

What the investigations do not establish is equally important.

Those gaps frame the policy question. Export controls and a naval blockade are designed to raise the cost and risk of exactly this kind of trade. The record so far shows the trade continuing at industrial scale, through intermediaries whose goods are recorded as originating in countries that are not themselves the source of the conflict. Whether that reflects a failure of enforcement or a network that has simply outgrown it is not yet answered by the evidence.