Washington (Somalia Today) – US intelligence agencies have obtained information suggesting China may have recently shipped shoulder-fired missiles to Iran to strengthen Tehran in its escalating conflict with the United States and Israel, The New York Times reported.
The intelligence remains preliminary, and there is no evidence that the Chinese-made weapons have yet been used against American or Israeli forces. But US officials cited in the report said the possible transfer could mark a dangerous new phase in the Middle East crisis.
Shoulder-fired missiles, formally known as Man-Portable Air-Defence Systems (MANPADS), are highly effective against low-flying aircraft, including helicopters and attack drones.
China, a major global arms manufacturer, produces several advanced MANPADS variants, including the FN-6 and QW-series, which have previously appeared in proxy conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa.
Beijing has historically been reluctant to supply finished military hardware directly to Tehran, despite the two countries signing a sweeping 25-year comprehensive strategic partnership in 2021.
However, the Times reported that a fierce internal debate is now underway in Beijing, with some officials pushing to allow Chinese defence firms to arm Iranian security forces directly.
If confirmed, the missile shipment would mark a significant escalation, suggesting factions within China’s leadership are actively seeking to engineer an American military setback and bog down US forces in the Middle East.
Covert supply lines
The report of possible lethal aid comes amid growing assessments that Beijing is already playing a covert and active role in the conflict.
US intelligence agencies believe China has quietly allowed companies to ship critical dual-use goods, including aerospace components, specialised chemicals and aviation fuel, to help sustain Iran’s war effort.
The strategy mirrors Beijing’s approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine, where China has publicly maintained neutrality while supplying Moscow with large volumes of dual-use technology and satellite imagery.
A separate report by CNN on Saturday supported that assessment, saying Beijing was preparing to send the MANPADS to the Islamic Republic in the coming weeks.
The Chinese government strongly rejected the reports.
“China has never provided weapons to any party in the conflict; the information in question is untrue,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement.
“We urge the US side to refrain from making baseless allegations, maliciously drawing connections, and engaging in sensationalism,” Liu added, insisting Beijing consistently fulfils its international obligations and seeks to de-escalate regional tensions.
An anti-Western axis
The intelligence about Beijing’s involvement has emerged alongside new evidence of Russian military coordination with Tehran.
According to the Times, US agencies have tracked Moscow supplying the Iranian military with highly specific satellite intelligence.
The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is reportedly using that data to target American naval vessels moving through the region’s contested waterways, as well as US and allied diplomatic sites across the Middle East.
The intelligence-sharing points to a deepening military symbiosis between Moscow and Tehran. During the Ukraine war, Iran supplied Russia with thousands of Shahed attack drones and ballistic missiles.
However, American officials said Moscow appears to have drawn a red line at providing Iran with offensive or defensive lethal military equipment, instead calibrating its support, including food aid and non-lethal supplies, to avoid provoking direct retaliation from the United States.
Taken together, the support from Beijing and Moscow shows how America’s main geopolitical adversaries are using the conflict to raise the strategic and financial costs of the US military campaign in the Middle East.
Diplomatic tightrope
The explosive intelligence comes at a highly delicate moment in US-China relations.
President Donald Trump is due to travel to Beijing next month for a closely watched summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The high-stakes meeting, set to focus heavily on tariffs, advanced technology export controls and military posturing in the Indo-Pacific, had originally been scheduled for March but was postponed after the outbreak of the Iran war.
For Xi, the Middle East conflict presents a complex geopolitical and economic dilemma.
China depends heavily on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption passes.
American officials believe Beijing is deeply anxious to avoid any disruption to global energy markets that a prolonged war could trigger.
China remains Iran’s largest trading partner and its main economic lifeline.
According to a recent report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally mandated watchdog, Chinese purchases account for roughly 90 per cent of Iran’s exported crude.
That illicit oil trade, largely carried out through a “dark fleet” of tankers designed to evade Western sanctions, generates tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue for Tehran, directly funding the government and its vast military apparatus.
The Gulf balancing act
Despite providing Tehran with a vital economic lifeline, China has carefully calibrated its public rhetoric during the conflict to appear strictly neutral.
Analysts say that calculated neutrality reflects Beijing’s massive multi-billion-dollar economic and technological investments in Arab states across the Gulf, many of which see Iran as a primary security threat and have faced direct or proxy attacks during the conflict.
In 2024, China strongly backed the expansion of the BRICS economic bloc to include both Iran and major Gulf powers such as the United Arab Emirates, presenting itself as a leading power broker in the Global South.
“If anything, they are siding rhetorically more so with their Gulf partners than with Iran,” Henrietta Levin, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, told the Times.
“The economic, the technological relationship, the energy relationship with the Gulf is in many ways more strategically significant for China than anything it has with Iran.”
