China is helping supply chemicals for Iran’s ballistic-missile program
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Two Iranian ships docked in China have been loaded with a critical ingredient to produce propellant for ballistic missiles, people familiar with the matter said—a demonstration of the challenge the Trump administration will have in pressing China to reduce cooperation with Iran. The two vessels are loaded with around 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a material that Iran could turn into 960 tons of ammonium perchlorate, one of the main ingredients for producing solid propellant for ballistic missiles, the people said.
That could be enough to produce 260 midrange Iranian missiles, one of the people, a Western official, said. Tehran’s growing reliance on Beijing is partly a result of Israel’s battering of Iran’s missile program and network of militants in recent months, but it also points to a larger challenge for Washington. Iran and China have become increasingly aligned with Russia and North Korea, a bloc of authoritarian nations that are united by their interests in undermining the U.S.-led world order.
There is no evidence that Chinese authorities knew of the deliveries. The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t respond to a request for comment. The planned delivery of the missile propellant was reported earlier by the Financial Times.
Iran has one of the most powerful ballistic-missile stockpiles in the Middle East, with more than 3,000 ballistic missiles in 2023 by the U.S.’s estimate. But its inventories are running lower since it launched two missile attacks on Israel last year and shipped missiles to Russia. Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes in October also degraded Iran’s missile production facilities.
Read more on livemint.com
