China is helping supply chemicals for Iran’s ballistic-missile program
Summary
Tehran’s growing reliance on Beijing is a consequence of the battering its missile program has had from Israeli strikes and highlights the alignment of Iran and China with Russia and North Korea.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. The strikes destroyed most of Iran’s planetary mixers, machines that are used to blend components for solid propellant and can’t be easily replaced. Solid propellant is a mixture of fuel and oxidizer that burn together to generate thrust in missiles and rockets.
U.S. and Israeli officials told The Wall Street Journal after the strike that Iran’s production of solid-propellant missiles could be set back by a year or more. U.S. officials have reiterated that assessment recently, meaning Iran might struggle to quickly use the shipments if they are delivered to Iran.
China has been involved in supplying solid-propellant for Iranian rockets and missiles as far back as the 1990s, according to Fabian Hinz, research fellow for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iranian officials and companies have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in recent years for procuring other solid-propellant ingredients, like nitrile butadiene rubber, from China.
“China was and is still the main supply chain for Iran for everything needed to build weapons," said Ronen Solomon, an Israeli security analyst following Iran.
It wasn’t clear when the deliveries from China were ordered, the Western official said, noting it might have been before Israel struck Iran in October. Beijing and Tehran might have reason to reconsider the delivery now that the ships’ presence at Chinese ports is in the public domain, the person said.
According to the shipping-tracking website Marine Traffic, a containership, the Golbon, loaded a cargo late Tuesday at Xiushan Island, near the central coastal Chinese city of Ningbo. It departed the port early Wednesday, giving its destination as the northern port of Taicang, but stopped sailing on Wednesday afternoon.
The second ship, a cargo vessel named the Jairon that is partly loaded, arrived in Liuheng, another port near Ningbo, on Dec. 19 and has been largely stationary since then.
The two vessels are controlled by Rahbaran Omid Darya Ship Management Co., a U.S.-sanctioned affiliate of Iran’s biggest non-oil shipper, Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, according to the European Union database Equasis. The shipper also has been sanctioned by the EU.
IRISL and Rahbaran Omid Darya didn’t return requests for comment. There was no immediate comment by the Iranian United Nations mission in New York.
According to Hinz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps conducts a program aimed at producing only solid-propellant missiles and has been expanding sites where those missiles are produced. Iran has at least one domestic facility to turn sodium perchlorate, the material loaded onto the two ships, into ammonium perchlorate, but it is unclear how much sodium perchlorate the facility holds. Tehran has also sourced other materials needed to make solid propellant for missiles, like aluminum powder, from foreign suppliers.
Iran is believed to have supplied ammonium perchlorate to pro-Iranian militias in the past to help their missile programs. In November 2022, the U.S. intercepted an Iranian fishing vessel carrying more than 70 tons of ammonium perchlorate in the Gulf of Oman, U.S. Naval Forces command announced at the time. The vessel was in transit from Iran along a route frequently used to transfer weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, the U.S. Navy said.
U.S. officials have long accused Iran of using its oil revenues in part to prop up pro-Iranian regional militias, and the Trump administration has said it wants to sharpen economic pressure on Iran to push it to accept constraints on its nuclear program and regional actions.
China has been the biggest source for those revenues, which have provided an economic lifeline for Iran’s struggling economy. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that China had given the go-ahead for Tehran to start drawing down and selling millions of barrels of oil that had been stored in China for years.
The U.S. Treasury Department has also sanctioned Chinese suppliers for Houthi weapons procurement in recent years. In 2023, the Justice Department also indicted a Chinese national for sanctions evasion for his alleged role in shipping to Iran material used in the nose tips of ballistic missiles.
Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, an organization that campaigns for measures to counter threats from Tehran, said the Trump administration needs to press Beijing to curb its ties with Iran. He said China is also undermining its own position in the Middle East.
“Beijing risks compromising its own interests in the Middle East by supplying Iran and the Houthis, as it is bolstering their ability to target not only Israel but also Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. should a future conflict erupt," he said.
Andrew Dowell contributed to this article.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com