Is China supplying Iran missile fuel? Analyst says they're 'cementing common cause' against US

At a time when Iran stands weakest in years, China appears to have come to its aid.

As part of the long-running Iran-China partnership, China is supplying missile fuel to China that can propel hundreds of missiles, according to Financial Times.

In recent years, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have formed a bloc to put up a united front against the US-led Western world. Each of these authoritarian regimes has taken an area where they have bogged down the West where the others support the main aggressor. In West Asia, Iran has taken a lead and is supported by Russia and China. Similarly, Iran, China, and North Korea support Russia’s war on Ukraine and shadow war on Europe.

The FT cited two Western security officials to report that two Iranian cargo ships, Golbon and Jairan, have loaded around 1,300 tonnes of sodium perchlorate, which is used to make ammonium perchlorate, which is the main ingredient for solid propellant for missiles.

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The newspaper noted that the fuel is enough to make 260 Kheibar Shekan or Haj Qassem missiles. It reported that the ships are expected to sail from China to Iran in the next few weeks.

The officials were quoted as saying that the fuel was being imported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the armed force of Iran that reports directly to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and is separate from the regime’s regular military.

The Kheibar Shekan is a medium-range ballistic missile used by the IRGC with a warhead of around 500 kg and maximum range of around 1,450 km. The Haj Qassem is a medium-range ballistic missile that has a 500-kg warhead with a maximum range of 1,400 km.

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Dennis Wilder, a former top China analyst at the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told the newspaper that China has a long history of arming Iran, which dates back to 1980s when it supplied Silkworm anti-ship missiles during the Iran-Iraq war.

“Since the early 1990s, China has assisted the Iranian military extensively with its ballistic missile development programme and has provided expertise, technology, parts, and training. China’s motivation for secretly assisting Iran today includes clandestinely helping Iran produce missiles for the Russian war effort [in Ukraine], cementing common cause against perceived US hegemonism . . . and Beijing’s purchase annually of large amounts of discounted Iranian crude oil,” said Wilder, who is currently an assistant professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.