The indictment of the nine Iranian hackers should have sent a chill through the spines of every research and manufacture entity outside of Iran. As long as sanctions and restrictions on Iran remain, Iran will take steps to circumvent those restrictions in order to affect a technological transfer. The Iranian Interests Section in Washington, D.C., managed to legally copy and preserve the entire corpus of the U.S. patent office. In 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted seven Iranian government hackers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC)”]
Source: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3267664/irans-need-to-steal-intellectual-property.html