[redwood]

One wonders if they've been able to upgrade to the latest generation of Chinese surveillance gear during the hiatus

[catigula]

They don't need the latest gear; Edward Snowden exposed the US doing this at the expert level in 2013.

[HDBaseT]

The question is, does Iran have access to the same backdoors?

Unlike Israel / United States, who invented (forced) the backdoors into the technology, Iran wouldn't have direct access to this.