The dual-use procurement challenge extends well beyond Russia. Sanctions-constrained actors, including Iranian defense entities and Iran-aligned proxies, need components subject to export controls. Drone parts fit this profile precisely, and Iran's own Shahed drone program has relied heavily on commercially available components sourced through third-country procurement networks.
A January 2026
Financial Times investigation found that Iran's Ministry of Defense Export Center (Mindex) was publicly advertising advanced weapons — including Shahed drones, ballistic missiles, and warships — for sale to foreign governments with cryptocurrency as an accepted payment method, in what appears to be one of the first known instances of a nation-state openly advertising strategic military hardware for crypto. Notably, Mindex's website explicitly addressed buyer concerns about sanctions evasion, stating that Iran's policies ensure contracts "can be executed," underscoring crypto is increasingly viewed by heavily sanctioned actors as a deliberate, institutionalized tool of sanctions circumvention, not merely a niche workaround.
As shown in the Reactor graph below, a wallet purchasing drone parts from a Hong Kong-based supplier has direct and indirect liquidity flows from the Iranian exchange Nobitex, IRGC wallets, and OFAC SDN Alireza Derakhshan, an Iranian national
designated for facilitating crypto transfers on behalf of the regime.
Against this backdrop, it has been instructive to monitor drone-related transactional activity in real-time, including during periods of active conflict. As depicted in the chart below, inflows to a small subset of drone vendors spiked during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025, then returned to pre-war levels when the ceasefire was concluded. While this activity is consistent with a war-time surge in drone-related procurement, it represents only a snapshot of limited vendor activity at a specific moment in time and should not be understood as representative of Iran's entire drone payment landscape or broader global patterns.