China and Russia Are Helping Iran: Reports

Emerging reports suggest the war in Iran has already turned into a proxy conflict between the United States and Israel on one side, and Iran, with help from China and Russia, on the other. If these reports are accurate, they align with a years-long history of cooperation between these Eastern nations, including in Ukraine.

Western media is reporting that China is helping Iran rebuild its missile systems and giving Iran location data on American military assets in the Middle East. This comes just weeks after news broke that Russia was been providing Iran with similar intelligence on U.S. asset locations. And just this week, Israeli media reported that Russia is providing Iran with intelligence for targeting energy infrastructure in Israel.

History of Cooperation

The cooperation between Iran, Russia, and China goes back years. The three nations have signed several cooperation agreements within the last few years, some of them in the area of defense. They also already have a track record of cooperating in military campaigns. In the summer of 2024, the Council on Foreign Relations’ magazine, Foreign Affairs, published an article detailing how Iran, China, and North Korea were helping Russia in Ukraine. The authors wrote, in an article titled “The Axis of Upheaval: How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order,” that the Russians had recently carried out an attack “with weapons fitted with technology from China, missiles from North Korea, and drones from Iran.”

The British outlet The Telegraph reported on Friday that it reviewed shipping data suggesting China has sent four vessels full of sodium perchlorate, used to produce missile propellant, to Iranian ports since the conflict began. The Telegraph’s analysis, reviewed by experts, suggests that the vessels could have “transported enough sodium perchlorate to produce hundreds of ballistic missiles.”

The neoconservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) endorsed this report.

Chinese Connection

The U.S. Defense Department said, via the front website Indo-Pacific Defense FORUM, that it’s looking into whether Iranian missiles that have landed in Israel have a “Made in China” sticker. “U.S. experts are determining whether fragments from Iranian missiles recently launched at Israel and toward several Gulf states indicate that the weapons were manufactured with Chinese technology and components,” the FORUM reported.

On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that Chinese tech firms — “some with links to the People’s Liberation Army” — are publicly marketing and selling detailed intelligence online, including data concerning “equipment at U.S. bases, positions and movements of American carrier strike groups, granular breakdowns of how U.S. aircraft (including B-2 stealth bombers) are assembling for strikes on Tehran, and other real-time insights into U.S. operations.” According to the article, this commercial activity provides Iran with “valuable battlefield awareness of U.S. forces.”

The firms’ private status supposedly provides China with “plausible deniability as to any official involvement.” But in China, there is no such thing as a wholly private company, and the U.S. government knows that. All tech firms are under the control of the Chinese Communist Party because the fascist-style model of quasi-private ownership in the country puts everything under state control.

The Chinese government has not issued a direct public response, denial, or rebuttal to reports that it’s helping Iran reconstitute its ballistic-missile program. But it has called the war illegal under international law and said it opposes attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Russia’s Role

As for Russia, news broke in early March that the Kremlin was providing Iran intelligence to target American assets in the Middle East. Officials told The Washington Post that Russia gave Iran the “locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft.”

When reporters asked Trump what he thought about this, the president admitted Russian President Vladimir Putin “might be helping” Iran “a little bit.” He also downplayed it, admitting that it’s similar to the intel the United States has provided Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Speaking of Ukraine, its intelligence apparatus is now ginning up the narrative that Russia has given Iran a list of 55 critical energy infrastructure targets within Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported this Monday. It’s obviously in Ukraine’s best interest to stir up U.S. animosity toward Russia, and it’s not beyond Israel to push the United States into wars, so this report should be taken with a grain of salt. But it is not without merit. Iranian leadership recently responded to Trump’s threats that the United States will destroy Iranian energy infrastructure by saying they will retaliate with strikes on Israeli energy infrastructure, as well as regional oil infrastructure and power plants associated with the United States and its allies.  

As noted above, Iran, Russia, and China are allies. They are invested in each other technologically, economically, and militarily. It’s probable that China and Russia are helping Iran. These nations have signed several agreements over the years, including the 2021 Iran-China 25-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the 2025 Iran-Russia 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty (which includes a defense component), the 2026 Iran-China-Russia Trilateral Strategic Pact, and of course, all three are BRICS members.

Adults in the Room

American economist, public policy expert, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs provided an interesting take on what China and Russia’s role should be in this war. Unlike his fellow Council on Foreign relations members, he doesn’t see these Eastern superpowers as sources of upheaval. Quite the contrary. They — with the addition of India — are the adults in the room, Sachs believes. “This [war] has to be stopped, and it has to be stopped by grown-ups,” he recently told British TV journalist Afshin Rattansi. “And there are only three grown-ups in the world right now that are in a position to stop this and they should stop it together. And that is Prime Minister Modi, President Xi Xinping, and President Vladimir Putin. They are the leaders of the other three superpowers of the world.”

Sachs expressed extra confidence in India, which is the current president of the BRICS group and in good standing with all the nations involved — the United States, Israel, Iran, Russia, and China.

Sach also called Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “psycopaths” for launching a “war of whim.” He cited concerning rhetorical examples including Trump’s vow to bomb Iran back to the “Stone Ages” and Netanyahu’s comments about bringing his own 10 plagues to Iran. This was before the president threatened to wipe out “a whole civilization.”

The president’s comments over the last few days indicate that he has become profoundly frustrated with the level of international economic disruption Iran has been able to cause by closing the Strait of Hormuz. They also suggest he’s becoming increasingly desperate, perhaps even mentally unstable.

Follow the Founders

It is a sad day when Americans see dictators that have overseen decades of human rights abuses and oppression against their own people, Xi and Putin specifically, as the “adults in the room.” Americans should be the ones to bring an end to the chaos and destruction this war has brought. This war would have likely never happened, much less escalated to this level, if the system of checks and balances put in motion by America’s wise Founding Fathers had been respected. Trump launched the war without congressional approval, in violation of the U.S. Constitution. And when lawmakers had a second chance to rein in the executive branch, they voted against the War Powers Resolution.

The Framers never intended for the president to have unilateral power to send Americans into war at his whim. And certainly not to attack a nation on the other side of the planet that posed no imminent threat. Moreover, current U.S. foreign policy is nothing like the noninterventionist foreign policy that was prescribed and carried out for the first half of America’s existence. These wars have cost American lives and added trillions of dollars in debt, all while the standard of living among Americans continues eroding.

The issue isn’t that China and Russia are helping Iran. They most likely are. The real issue is that the most militarily powerful nation in the history of mankind spends more time warring on on the other side of the planet than at building up its own country and promoting peace.