Iptables failure linaro-alip 4.4.154 on RockPi4

Hello,

I am facing an issue when I try to run iptables with linux-4.4-latest on linaro-alip (Debian Stretch).

root@linaro-alip:/boot# iptables -F
iptables v1.6.0: can't initialize iptables table `filter': iptables who? (do you need to insmod?)
Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.
root@linaro-alip:/boot# uname -a
Linux linaro-alip 4.4.154 #13 SMP Mon Nov 5 18:25:35 CST 2018 aarch64 GNU/Linux
root@linaro-alip:/boot# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 9.13 (stretch)
Release:        9.13
Codename:       stretch
root@linaro-alip:/boot#

I have tried to do modprobe ip_tables and tried re-installing the kernel. It appears the module is not properly loaded. Can I get a pointer how to approach the issue?

Thanks!
F