Iran’s Domestic Phone Plan Hinges on Foreign Partners and Hard Currency

Iran's plan to produce smartphones domestically will depend on a foreign manufacturing partner and a transfer of technology, the country's telecommunications minister said, ruling out any attempt to build the industry in isolation.

Sattar Hashemi said the government does not intend to pursue domestic production by severing ties with foreign companies, and that the aim is a locally made device built alongside an outside firm. He told the semi-official Tasnim news agency that the documents and mechanisms behind the plan have been finalised, but that no start date has been set.

Hashemi said the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, Iran's telecom regulator, is working with the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, which oversees handset imports and the national phone registration scheme, to direct foreign currency allocations to companies that genuinely manufacture handsets. He said the arrangement would preserve consumer rights.

The framing is the notable part. Iran has spent years promoting domestically built substitutes for foreign technology, and a minister stating publicly that a flagship manufacturing project cannot proceed without an outside partner is an acknowledgement of where that approach runs out. It also locates the binding constraint in access — to technology and to hard currency — rather than in factory capacity.

International sanctions, which cut Iranian firms off from much of the global technology supply chain, limit which foreign manufacturers can legally enter a partnership with an Iranian company, narrowing the field before any negotiation begins.

Three ministries and a parliament

Meetings on the plan have been held with the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, the Central Bank of Iran, which sets the official exchange rate and controls currency allocation, and with parliament, Hashemi said.

The combination maps onto what the project would require: industrial policy, access to hard currency, and legislation. It also means no single ministry can deliver it alone.

What has not been said

Hashemi named no prospective partner, gave no production target and set no timetable. He did not say which companies currently receive foreign currency allocations for handsets, nor how the government will determine which of them qualify as genuine manufacturers.

The timing, he said, would depend on conditions in the country.