Three American soldiers died on July 17 when Iranian ballistic missiles hit a residential compound at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in northeastern Jordan. Four more were wounded. Now U.S. officials familiar with the matter have told The Wall Street Journal that Iran got high-resolution satellite imagery from Chinese sources before it struck.
The officials called it the clearest evidence so far that Chinese support for Iran has had lethal consequences for U.S. forces. They said Washington had tied the imagery to the July attack, and that Iran also targeted manned and unmanned aircraft stationed at the base. They did not name the Chinese entities that supplied the pictures and did not accuse the Chinese government of direct involvement. Iran collected images both before and after the strike, they said.
Beijing’s answer
Senior U.S. officials raised the imagery with their Chinese counterparts, according to the Journal. Beijing rejected the allegations and asked for evidence. China’s Foreign Ministry accused “certain parties” of trying to drag it into the conflict. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to the paper’s request for comment.
The warnings were not new. The Trump administration had spent months telling Chinese officials that Chinese companies were supplying Iran with imagery that could be used to target American forces. In May it imposed sanctions on several Chinese companies, saying their provision of such imagery “poses a threat to U.S. and allied personnel.”
What Iran showed afterward
Within three days of the attack, Iran published high-resolution images showing damage in three separate sections of the Jordanian base. The Journal’s own review of lower-resolution public satellite imagery found damage to more than 20 structures across those areas. The strike was one of three missile attacks on the base within 24 hours. The deaths were the first U.S. military fatalities since the April ceasefire.
Analysts and former officials cautioned that Chinese imagery was probably just one input. Iran’s military also relies on its own satellites and human intelligence networks, and U.S. officials cited by the Journal said it receives intelligence and imagery from Russia as well.
A summit on the calendar
The timing is awkward. Xi Jinping is due to meet President Donald Trump at the White House on September 24, and Trump has told his team that a good relationship with Xi is a top priority, the Journal reported. U.S. officials have therefore tried to avoid public clashes with Beijing that could disrupt preparations.
A White House official told the newspaper that no outside help had meaningfully improved Iran’s ability to attack the United States, without addressing the satellite findings directly. Days after the attack, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Asked later whether China was giving Iran targeting intelligence, Rubio did not answer directly. “Nothing China did altered in any way the course of the conflict,” he said.
