China has been providing Iran with targeting coordinates on U.S. military forces and equipment, a source familiar with the intelligence tells me on the condition of anonymity.
The intelligence is mainly GEOINT from satellites, the person said. And it did not start immediately, when Operation Epic Fury began. Beijing started sharing intel about ten days to two weeks into the war, the person said. That would be March 10 onward.
The source said that the White House is aware of China’s intelligence-sharing with Iran, and surmised that it was part of why President Donald Trump postposed his meeting with his counterpart, Xi Jinping. The summit had been scheduled for late March or early April. The White House said last week that Trump’s visit to Beijing was rescheduled for May 14 and 15, and I’m told the President is looking forward to visiting China, thinking it will be a positive meeting.
When I reached out to the White House, explaining that a source had told me that China was sharing intelligence on U.S. military personnel in Iran and that this was a factor in Trump’s delayed visit with Xi, spokeswoman Olivia Wales did not contract or challenge the information. Instead, she told me by email, “Nothing provided to Iran by any other country is affecting our operational success.”
The same remark she shared with Wall Street Journal reporters who first reported that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran.
She went on to share how well Operation Epic Fury is going. “The United States military has struck more than 10,000 targets and destroyed more than 140 Iranian naval vessels leading to their missile attacks and drone attacks decreasing by 90%. The terrorist Iranian regime continues to be crushed by the full might of the most lethal fighting force in the world.”
It is unclear if any U.S. service members were killed or injured as a result of China’s intelligence-sharing. The last known deaths of at least 13 service members who died occurred on March 12 in western Iraq, with U.S. Central Command saying a refueling aircraft crashed with another plane.
The source also flagged how China is gleaning a lot of intelligence on how the U.S. conducts military operations, which would be valuable to the Communist Party in the event of conflict over Taiwan.
This is a silent but major shift in U.S.-China relations, bringing two countries that compete and spy one each other a little bit closer to direct conflict. Still, the source says it is difficult to gauge the precise reasoning behind China’s decision to start sharing targeting coordinates.
I reached out to the CIA and China’s embassy in Washington for comment. Neither have currently responded to my requests.
Publicly, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on March 2, “China is deeply concerned over the regional spillover,” urged a stop to military operations, and called the the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty and security.”
Iranian tankers have continued to sail through the Strait of Hormuz to China, the main buyer of Tehran’s oil. But my guess is that China doesn’t appreciate Iran’s retaliation, striking Gulf states where Chinese firms have invested billions in oil infrastructure and ports.
China accounts for about 90 percent of Iran’s exported oil, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan legislative branch commission that investigates risks from U.S.-China economic relations.
As I thought about this piece of information that I am reporting on, I also looked back at the past: This same commission said that China was a major supplier of conventional weapons to Iran in the 1980s, but stopped in 2015 because of a UN Security Council resolution which brought international scrutiny. In more recent years, and as recently as March 2 according to the commission, China has supported Iran’s ballistic missile program by providing sodium perchlorate, a chemical precursor for solid missile propellant. Would providing intelligence be so far off?
Xi personally signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” with Khamenei’s regime in 2021. Their countries came together for their first joint military exercises in 2019, joined by Russia — who, as mentioned above, has also provided Iran with targeting intelligence on the locations of U.S. forces and equipment.
Politico reported that a Kremlin negotiator proposed to Jared Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff that Moscow would stop sharing intelligence with Tehran if the Washington also stopped sharing intel with Kyiv. The Russian negotiator denied the quid pro quo, calling it “fake.”
