Türkiye advises firms to avoid Iran route over reverse engineering concerns

ANKARA

Türkiye’s Trade Ministry has issued a cautionary directive to Turkish companies against utilizing Iranian transit routes for the shipment of domestically produced defense products — notably UAVs — citing concerns over potential reverse engineering.

According to a report published by daily Milliyet on April 13, the ministry’s advisory was addressed to customs officials, logistics operators and shipping companies.

It said that, in light of Türkiye’s recent advancements in defense production, trade in this sector with Central Asian countries has increased significantly.

Some Turkish firms have been using routes that pass through Iran to fulfill contractual deliveries.

The ministry cited mounting concerns over instances of technology theft involving Iranian entities.

Iran has been investing heavily in its defense industry while grappling with international sanctions that restrict access to high-tech components. In response, the country is believed to rely increasingly on reverse engineering — a process by which complex systems are dismantled and analyzed to replicate them without original documentation or source codes.

The advisory underlined that Iran’s reverse engineering efforts target technologies with strategic value and dual-use potential. Turkish defense exporters were therefore urged to steer clear of Iranian transit routes, especially when transporting UAVs or electronic components that could be vulnerable to unauthorized inspection or interception.

Customs and freight industry sources pointed to a range of possible risks during transit through Iran. These include the temporary opening of cargo containers, X-ray and advanced scanning of internal systems, chip-level imaging of electronic components and even the replacement of original parts with clones.

Embedding of surveillance software into critical systems was also listed among plausible scenarios.

Iran’s track record in this domain has drawn international attention. In recent years, the country has been accused of reverse engineering American drone technology, including instances where U.S. UAVs were downed and subsequently dissected for technological replication.

The design of Iran’s Shahed drone series is widely believed to have been modeled on U.S. stealth drone systems.

The Turkish ministry’s statement concludes by advising companies to assess transit routes carefully and implement additional safeguards when exporting high-value, dual-use defense technologies.