Task Force Iron Gate Targets Iran Hidden Supply Routes
by: Marcus Webb

Task Force Iron Gate Targets Iran’s Hidden Supply Routes

U.S. Central Command has set up a new task force to choke off Iran’s trade over land and across the Caspian Sea. CENTCOM said on Saturday, Nov. 7, that its commander, Adm. Brad Cooper, had ordered the creation of Task Force Iron Gate, a staff of about 20 civilian and military personnel based in Tampa, Florida. The team will coordinate with other U.S. agencies on preventing the movement of advanced weapons, dual-use technology, sanctioned materials and illegal revenue across Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea, the command said in a statement.

The sea blockade already covers Iran’s ports. Iron Gate is aimed at the routes that bypass it, and the clearest public picture of what moves along those routes comes from a Reuters investigation published nine days earlier. It found that Iran had built a covert network of more than 5,000 Defense Ministry purchasing agencies and used it to import at least $2 billion in hardware, explosives and heavy trucks between January 2025 and June 2026.

Cooper said in the statement that the task force “reinforces the success of our ironclad blockade against Iran at sea.” CENTCOM says the naval blockade has kept Iran from exporting more than $25 billion in crude oil in recent months.

Five thousand agencies with one address

Reuters reporters Gavin Finch, Maggie Michael, Allison Martell and Marine Delrue traced agencies whose names begin with “MOD,” for Ministry of Defense. In the records Reuters reviewed, they share the address of Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics in Tehran. Most were set up in 2013. Phone numbers for 91 of them appear in Bank Sepah records for Revolutionary Guards personnel.

The shopping list, as Reuters described it, included rocket propellants, explosives, detonators and titanium. It also included 435 Iveco trucks and thousands of Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser vehicles, the kind of heavy-duty trucks that can carry missile launchers. Much of it was recorded as coming from China, Russia and Germany. Reuters counted five Russian detonator shipments worth $7.6 million since the start of 2025. Among the end users it named were the military unit that oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program and Sahara Thunder, a company the U.S. sanctioned in 2024 for supplying drones to Russia.

Three routes carried the goods, according to the documents Reuters reviewed and records from the trade-data firm ImportGenius. Cargo ships crossed the Caspian from Russia, trucks came overland from Central Asia, and freight planes flew in from China. Those are the routes Iron Gate is now meant to watch. Reuters also found that for 97% of the shipments, the transactions were settled without any currency transfer, which leaves no trail through the banking system that sanctions usually rely on.

“This is the complete ecosystem of the Iranian military’s trade business,” Miad Maleki, a former senior official at the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, told Reuters after reviewing the material.

What the records show, and who they came from

Reuters based the investigation on thousands of Iranian bank and government records, corporate filings and import data. It cross-checked part of some 19,000 import records against shipping documents, social media footage and Iranian state media. Some of the material came through leaks published by a group called WikiIran, which told Reuters the documents are authentic. Reuters said it could not establish who runs WikiIran. For many shipments, it identified the cargo only from customs codes.

The governments involved said little. China’s Foreign Ministry told Reuters it was unaware of the situation described and opposed attempts to link China to the war. Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond, and neither did any Iranian government body Reuters contacted. Iveco said any of its vehicles in Iran got there beyond its control, and Toyota said it had no knowledge of the purchases. The White House and CENTCOM did not respond to Reuters, and a Treasury spokeswoman said U.S. pressure had cut off the Iranian government’s main sources of money. Reuters found no Western sanctions designation for the MOD agencies themselves.

A land squeeze that started before the task force

Washington was already pressing Iran’s neighbors before Iron Gate existed. On Oct. 9, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Newsmax that the U.S. had moved from maximum pressure to an “absolute isolation campaign” and was working with Pakistan and Türkiye to cut off all the land routes, Türkiye Today reported. Neither Ankara nor Islamabad commented at the time.

On Oct. 17, Pakistan halted trade at its Taftan and Gabd-Rimdan crossings with Iran, leaving about 2,000 trucks stuck on both sides, Al Jazeera reported. A local Pakistani official called it a temporary counterterrorism measure. Iran’s Foreign Ministry blamed technical issues. Since then, only Iranian gas tankers and perishable produce have been allowed through, Iran International and Caspian Post reported, and Türkiye has let in only 200 to 300 Iranian trucks a day at crossings that can handle about 1,000. Iraq has closed a crossing too, Iran International reported.

The U.S. has not declared a land blockade, Iran International noted, and the task force announcement doesn’t call itself one.

What CENTCOM didn’t say

The announcement leaves most of the operational picture blank. CENTCOM did not name the border crossings or countries Iron Gate will focus on, Türkiye Today reported. Its graphic marked Iran’s borders with Iraq, Türkiye, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. CENTCOM’s statement calls Iron Gate an internal staff that will support ongoing government efforts. It did not say what legal authority the task force works under, or whether any of that support will extend to stopping cargo. The statement names no partner agencies. The only account of which agencies the team will work with came from a U.S. military official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The official named the Treasury, State and Justice Departments and the intelligence community.

The Caspian route runs from Russia, the source of the detonator shipments Reuters traced. Iran shares the sea with Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, and CENTCOM has not said how a staff in Tampa will reach traffic there.

No Iranian response to the task force had been reported as of Nov. 9. Tehran has made lifting the naval blockade a condition for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and an interim deal carried to the White House by Qatar’s prime minister on Nov. 9 would reportedly do that. We’re following the blockade’s effect at sea in our Hormuz Tanker Attack Tracker.

Sources

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