Real Clear Defense China and Iran After the 12-Day War By Thomas Gormley October 15, 2025

 Real Clear Defense 

China and Iran After the 12-Day War

By Thomas Gormley

October 15, 2025

AP

Technology, Deterrence, and the Future of U.S. Leverage

Iran’s 12-Day War with Israel has accelerated Tehran’s interest in Chinese technology. The emerging trajectory of the China-Iran technological partnership suggests it could undermine U.S. or Israeli freedom of action in a future confrontation.

China offered little more than rhetorical condemnation as it watched Israel operate with near impunity above and on the ground in Iran this June, raising serious doubts about their ability to project meaningful hard power in the region. However, the months following the war have seen a change in China’s posture. While Iran is already an established testing ground for China’s digital-authoritarianism, Beijing has now become keen to help the regime in Tehran address the major gaps in its national security exposed by Israel’s operations. This comes as Russia, Iran’s main external military partner, has increasingly come-up short in delivering Tehran military hardware and systems (hardware and systems the Kremlin itself needs for its ongoing invasion of Ukraine).

The backdrop for this increased military support is the 25-year strategic cooperation pact signed by Beijing and Tehran in 2021. The pact envisioned Chinese investment in Iran’s energy and infrastructure in exchange for Iranian oil. Crucially, the agreement brought Iran into China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This accelerated the transfer of Chinese technology to Tehran, with firms such as Tiandy Technologies supporting domestic surveillance. The export of surveillance software more than doubled following renewed anti-government protests in Iran in 2022, and Chinese facial recognition software played a significant role in suppressing these protests in 2023. China has also provided dual-use technologies, such as semiconductors and intelligence gathering software.

In the past, illicit procurement and reverse engineering of Western technology had offered Iran a secondary route to foreign innovation not supplied by Russia or China. Iran’s tech sector has partially relied on Western technology transferred through sanction-evading front companies procuring dual-use technologies. This illicit global procurement network was brought to light by the 2022 revelation that Iranian Mohajer-6 drones used against Ukraine contained components made in both the U.S. and EU. Despite the regime frequently claiming to have weaned Iran off foreign tech in multiple sectors of its economy and critical infrastructure, its recent war with Israel highlighted its remaining vulnerabilities. Israeli strikes targeted nuclear and advanced military infrastructure understood to be hard to replace due to their foreign origins. Furthermore, as confirmed by Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, Tehran deliberately jammed domestic GPS signals to counter major disruptions to the U.S.-operated system during the war.

Now, Beijing is looking to step in, pledging to accelerate their formal partnership with Iran through their 25-year strategic cooperation pact. In May 2025, Iran’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Sattar Hashemi, met Li Lecheng of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to initiate joint ventures in artificial intelligence, smart industry and communications infrastructure. This was followed by Hashemi’s announcement of a new “strategic bond” in AI and the digital economy in September.

Iran has now publicly shared its plan to fully switch to the China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system as a replacement for GPS. Iranian media have touted the acquisition as a shift away from reliance on Western technology and as part of a new alignment that challenges the global “power structure” sustained by such dependence. Though gradual, beginning as early as 2015, Tehran’s public announcement to consider full adoption of the Chinese alternative following the self-jamming of its domestic GPS signals in June marks a political and strategic milestone.

The integration of this system could make future actions against Iran on the part of Israel and the U.S. more difficult. Both the U.S. and Israel have relied on their ability to jam or spoof GPS and satellite signals in the Gulf and confuse Iranian military systems. This strategic advantage may now have been weakened. Adopting the BeiDou systems offers Tehran encrypted military signals, global coverage, and greater targeting accuracy. 

This increased cooperation has been accompanied by the delivery of military capabilities and infrastructure. China has helped strengthen Iran’s air defenses by supplying HQ-9B surface-to-air missiles, which can operate alongside Russia’s S-300 systems and replace equipment lost in Israeli strikes in 2024 and 2025. Additional support included components for solid-fuel propellants and guidance systems, allowing Iran to rebuild missile production lines damaged by Israeli strikes.

The integration of Chinese supplied semi-conductor and AI technology into these military capabilities adds another layer of concern. Recovered wreckage of an Iranian Shahed-136 drone in June 2025 showed the integration of AI targeting systems. Iranian media reported in December 2024 that the IRGC’s Navy had already integrated AI technology into 26,000 pieces of equipment including cruise-missiles. On October 1, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced action against a procurement network spanning Hong Kong, China, and Iran that sources U.S. dual-use technology for integration into radars and missile guidance systems supporting Iran’s vulnerable surface-to-air defenses. While greater Chinese involvement in the integration of AI technology into defensive and offensive capabilities should be expected, it may prove difficult for Western intelligence agencies to track due to the partnership’s reliance on knowledge transfers and less conspicuous dual-use components.

Iran can also be expected to continue leveraging Chinese know-how to address the regime’s vulnerability to internal popular disaffection, a vulnerability that was sharply underscored by Isreal’s intelligence successes during the 12-Day War. On 3 September, Iranian state media described the hybrid warfare threat it faces as “the use of all domains of power, including information, electronic, cultural, social, and military operations, by hostile actors to destabilize Iran.” Moreover, it identified the need to shape public opinion through domestic technology and combat “narrative warfare” conducted by adversaries. In line with this goal, the concept of a “National Information Network,” long promoted and reportedly gaining traction, would give the regime greater control over domestic internet and communications, following the model of China’s “Great Firewall,” according to Iran’s Student News Network in August.

The failure of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” to deliver its intended region-wide retaliation in June will deepen Iran’s dependence on China for deterrence capabilities and internal security. If the U.S. and Israel wish to preserve their ability to strike Iran with the speed and impunity shown during the 12-Day War—leveraging both intelligence from a disaffected population and superior military capabilities—they will need to confront this growing partnership. Though China and Iran may have little in common ideologically other than a shared antipathy to the liberal rules based international order, the Iranian regime undoubtedly knows that Chinese technological support is critical to its survival, and China may well view strong support for the regime as the price that must be paid to maintain a foothold in Eurasia.

More aggressively targeting illicit Chinese purchases of Iranian oil, Tehran’s primary, tangible contribution to the China/Iran partnership, may in the short term be the West’s most effective long-term method of disrupting it. Iran depends on China to purchase 90% of its crude oil exports, and accounts for 10% of China’s crude oil imports. This trade relies on shadow fleets to transfer Iranian oil before the origins of their contents can be disguised by the Chinese “teapot” refineries that receive them. As Saeed Ghasseminejad and Aidin Panahi argued in their recent article in The National Interest, prioritizing aging Iranian linked tankers for inspection and detention by port-state controlled authorities could reduce the trade’s transportation capacity. Second, as CSIS’s Clayton Seigle pointed to in May, the evidentiary standards for sanction issuing authorities such as OFAC could be lowered to target larger Chinese state-owned oil entities.

While China’s current role in bolstering Iran’s defenses through the sharing of technology would not decisively shield Iran from U.S. or Israeli strikes at present, Washington should more assertively address this new China–Iran dynamic now, rather than waiting for a crisis to test its limits.

Thomas Gormley is a Research Assistant at the Shahal M. Khan Cyber and Economic Security Institute and a second-year MA candidate at American University, specializing in U.S. Foreign Policy and 

National Security.