Parts made by more than a dozen US and Western companies were found inside a single Iranian drone shot down in Ukraine last fall, according to an assessment by Ukrainian intelligence that exclusively acquired by CNN.
The assessment, which was shared with US administration officials late last year, shows the extent of the problem facing the Biden administration, which has pledged to stop Iran's production of drones that Russia is launching by the hundreds into Ukraine.
CNN reported last month that the White House created a team work to explore how American and Western technology (by smaller equipment such as semiconductors and GPS units to larger components such as engines) ended up in Iranian drones.
Of the 52 components the Ukrainians removed from Iran's Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been made by 13 different US companies, according to the assessment.
The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan and China, according to the declassified report.
But the options to combat the issue seem to be very limited. The US has for years imposed tough export control restrictions and sanctions to prevent the "leakage" of high-quality materials to Iran. Now U.S. officials are considering stepped-up enforcement of those sanctions, encouraging companies to better monitor the chains supply that they use. This seems to be important if one wants to track down the third party distributors who buy these productand promote them in embargoed countries.
