Report: 5 Chinese Ships Transported Missile Fuel to Iran During the War

SadaNews - An analysis of shipping data has shown that China continues to supply Iran with large quantities of chemicals necessary for producing ballistic missile fuel, despite the extensive military strikes it has faced.

According to the analysis published by the British newspaper "Telegraph", four Iranian ships that are under international sanctions have docked at the ports of Tehran since the outbreak of the war, while a fifth ship was anchored off its coast.

It is believed that these ships are transporting sodium perchlorate, which is the essential raw material for producing solid rocket fuel for ballistic missiles.

The ships departed from the Gaolan port in Zhuhai, China, which houses the largest liquid chemical storage facilities in the country. The analysis, reviewed by specialized experts, indicates that the quantities transported are sufficient to produce hundreds of ballistic missiles.

All five ships belong to the Iranian shipping fleet, which is subject to American, British, and European sanctions. Among them is the "Hamona" ship, which left on February 19, about a week before the outbreak of the war, and arrived in Bandar Abbas on March 26 after a five-week journey.

Experts estimate that these new shipments are larger than previous shipments in early 2025 on the ships "Golban" and "Jiran", which were sufficient to produce between 102 and 157 missiles.

Using those quantities as a benchmark, Iran may have imported enough to produce around 785 additional missiles. This means, according to war observers, that Tehran is capable of launching between 10 and 30 missiles daily for another entire month.

According to Miad Maleki, a former official at the U.S. Treasury and a consultant at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, these shipments are a clear indication that Iran is desperately trying to replenish and address the severe shortage in its missile fuel and munitions stockpile.

Professor Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the James Martin Center, indicates that the presence of these shipments demonstrates that Iran still retains missile production capacity despite continuous bombardment. Isaac Karden, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described China's continued allowance of these shipments as a "regular flow".

He clarified that Beijing is taking advantage of the fact that these are commercial goods and not ready-made weapons, allowing for plausible deniability while providing implicit support to the Iranian regime.

This approach resembles previous Chinese support for Russian war production. Despite the difficulty in tracking the ships due to halted automatic tracking systems and changes in registered names and announced destinations, the analysis confirms that China facilitates access to raw materials for Iran via sea, and possibly overland through Pakistan in the future.