Yep, that's why I didn't directly say the Hittites had an iron monopoly (the development of iron smelting appears to have predate them), but some small group(s) related or associated with them seem to have had dominance in its production - as the majority of early smelted-iron archeological finds are located in Anatolia or nearby areas where the Hittite lived or had influence. Moreover, we don't see any evidence of iron smelting sites outside of Anatolia (usually hinted by the large presence of associated slag waste) until ~950 BCE, specifically a dated site in Jordan where large amounts of ferrous slag and furnace building material was found. 900-800 BCE we just see a huge jump in iron artifacts being made and used in the Eastern Mediterranean despite the technology existing for at least three centuries. So it seems those who did knew how to smelt iron at first did their best to restrict the spread of the technology.