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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a Chinese commercial satellite provider supplied Iran with high-resolution images of a US military base in Jordan just prior to the July missile attack that killed three American service members. The new information regarding Beijing's involvement in the Iran conflict comes at a particularly sensitive time in relations between the US and China with President Trump preparing to host Chinese President Xi Jinping for a summit in the coming weeks. Currently, Xi is in New Delhi for the BRICS summit of leaders from Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.
Unnamed US officials told the WSJ that Iran obtained the images from the Chinese satellite company ahead of the attack. The images, provided to Iran by Chinese sources, gave Tehran the images' precise geolocation, enabling it to strike the target with great accuracy. While China has denied any involvement in the conflict between the US and Iran, it maintains that Chinese satellite operators are commercial entities operating within the ambit of international law.
The report comes at a particularly sensitive time as both the US and China engage in a delicate diplomatic dance. A much-hyped summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was put on hold as the crisis in the Hormuz escalated, with the US pressing China to leverage its influence with Iran to bring an end to the hostilities. China, however, has to date opted to remain neutral in the conflict between the US and Iran and denied any role by the Chinese government in the transfer of the satellite imagery to Tehran.
The attack killed three US service members in July, marking the first time US service members had been killed in action by Iran in the current conflict. The US subsequently carried out strikes against IRGC facilities in Iraq, with the cycle of escalation continuing into the current month.
The revelation will likely make the US-China diplomatic efforts to end the Iran conflict more difficult in the short term. Some US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle already have called for placing sanctions on Chinese companies involved in the commercial satellite imagery industry that provided the images to Iran. To date, however, the US administration has declined to hold China responsible for the imagery transfer in a formal public statement, and has announced no consequences for China's behavior to date.
It should be noted that the WSJ has appeared to have an agenda, along with other legacy media sources, of harming the American efforts in the Middle East under the Trump administration, and the unnamed source information should be read with that agenda in mind.
