Is China Helping Iran Take On The US Air Force?

As Iran picks up the pieces of its air defenses after an endless wave of U.S. strikes, a new report claims China is helping Tehran re-arm.

Chinese firms will allegedly be providing Iran with up to 400 man-portable air defense systems, Reuters reported, citing three anonymous sources familiar with the deal. The Iranian military has historically preferred indigenous military production; this new deal may be a key example of how the Iran War has driven the Iranians more firmly into the arms of Beijing, according to the United States Institute of Peace.

The Iran War has devolved into a game of cat-and-mouse, with numerous ceasefires that consistently devolve into hostilities.

The Iranian military launched an attack at a U.S. airbase in Jordan on Tuesday, Axios reported. The U.S. will retaliate, President Donald Trump threatened on Wednesday.

“We’re going to beat the f***ing sh** out of them,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News, according to an X post from the outlet.

China denied the Reuters report in a statement sent to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“We are not familiar with the specific situation and have nothing to share,” a spokesperson from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington told the DCNF. “I want to emphasize that China always acts prudently and responsibly on the export of military products, and exercises strict control in accordance with China’s laws and regulations on export control and due international obligations. China opposes groundless smear and ill-intentioned association.

“The Reuters report is plausible, but it relies on anonymous sources, and the deliveries have not been confirmed,” Stephen Herzog, a Professor at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury College, told the DCNF. “An arms transfer of this size would be difficult to execute legally without formal approval in Beijing. Military exports require licensing, recipient-government end-user certification, and customs clearance.”

While the Iranian military still retains significant offensive abilities, as seen by their repeated strikes on Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Syria and Iraq, Iranian air defenses have suffered significant damage.

“It’s not just the operational forces that were hit, but significantly Iran’s ability to domestically develop and produce new surface-to-air missiles, short-range, medium-range and long-range was also severely degraded,” Jim Lamson, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told the DCNF. “So Iran’s in a quandary: ‘How do we rebuild in the short term?’ Especially, but even in the longer term, our [Iranian] air defense, not just our deployed forces and the radars and all that, but also the production infrastructure to develop and produce new ones.”

“As the President stated, nothing that any outside actor is doing to help Iran is in any way increasing their ability to target Americans,” a White House official told the DCNF.

U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon declined to comment.

The U.S. military knocked out 82% of Iranian air defenses, Adm. Charles Cooper told Congress on May 14, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

The State Department, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is inconceivable that Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party would be unaware of a major arms sale to Iran,” Andrew Harding, a policy analyst for national security and Indo-Pacific affairs at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “If the report is confirmed, this is a very concerning development. According to President Trump, Xi Jinping told him that China would not provide military equipment to Iran. A deal like this would obviously be in direct violation of that pledge.”

“I think this is one data point that reflects the effectiveness of Israeli and U.S. strikes on not just Iran’s surface-to-air missile production infrastructure, but also its ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, and larger defense industrial base,” Lamson told the DCNF. “Especially this year … Iran has suffered significant damage in those areas, and will have a tough time in many areas rebuilding.”

China has denied the reporting on the alleged Iranian missile sale.

“The relevant reports are completely groundless. China has consistently played a role ⁠in promoting peace and ending the conflict,” Reuters reported, citing China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The missiles provided could be Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 missiles, according to the outlet.

The QW-12 missile has an engagement range of roughly 0.3 to 3.7 miles, and carries a fragmentation warhead, according to Janes, an open-source defense and security intelligence provider.

The FN-16 missile has similar range and carries a high-explosive warhead that can automatically explode when it gets close to the target, according to the Small Arms Survey and specialist publication The Armourer’s Bench.

“I mean, it’s an enhancement of Iranian air defenses and a complication for the U.S. and Israel, but I don’t see it as strategically that impactful by itself,” Lamson told the DCNF.

These man-portable air defense systems are more advantageous for the Iranian military than the self-propelled or static air defenses that it relied on at the beginning of the war, which were easy targets for the U.S. military.

“I think that Iran acquiring several hundred MANPADS boils down to a tactical improvement, not a strategic one. So yes, they would make helicopters, drones, and low-flying aircraft more vulnerable near Iran’s key sites,” Herzog told the DCNF. “But they would pose less of a threat to Israeli or U.S. aircraft operating above their range or launching stand-off weapons from afar. There are also plenty of countermeasures that aircraft can use to mitigate the implications of these new weapons.”

This new deal could be worth up to $70 million, Reuters reported. A Hong Kong-based company called Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment signed the deal with the Iranians, according to the outlet.

Zhong Qing Bao Shang Group, the Beijing-based company Reuters identified as the parent of Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment, did not respond to a request for comment.

“If the report is accurate, the Hong Kong intermediary could potentially compartmentalize the transaction and make it less visible to outside actors without concealing supplier information from Beijing,” Herzog told the DCNF. “But its involvement alone would not prove that the transaction was unauthorized.”

Iranian currency has been rapidly devalued due to massive inflation caused by the Iran War. Iran now has the third-highest inflation in the world at 68.9%, behind Venezuela at 387.4% and Sudan at 75.1%, according to the International Monetary Fund’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook.

“President Trump has already warned that Chinese support for Tehran would trigger severe consequences,” Harding told the DCNF. “The United States should judge Beijing by its actions, not its rhetoric, and strictly enforce any red lines regarding Chinese assistance to Iran. President Trump should make clear through word and deed that material support for Iran will carry real costs for the U.S.-China relationship.”

The U.S. Air Force has been able to wage an extensive air campaign against Iran, but it has paid for those losses with many drones and aircraft.

So far, the U.S. Air Force has lost 16 MQ-9 Reaper drones, one F-15E Strike Eagle and one A-10 Thunderbolt II to enemy air defense since the war began on Feb. 28. Nearly 30 Reapers were lost during the Iran War according to Air and Space Forces Magazine, however it remains unclear how many of these were lost to Iranian air defense versus how many were shot down while on the ground.

However, these are not the only aircraft lost during the Iran War; they are only the aircraft that have been shot down by Iranian air defense. The U.S. Air Force also lost three F-15E Strike Eagles in a Kuwaiti friendly fire incident, one AH-64 Apache attack helicopter in a mid-air collision, and an Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker in another collision.

“Iran and Russia have longstanding military and defense cooperation,” Lamson told the DCNF. “Iran and China have longstanding military and defense cooperation, and these definitely are things that will be a challenge and potential threat moving forward. But it’s really, to me, it’s still the bilateral relationships, the dyads, if you will, Iran-China, Iran-Russia, Iran-North Korea, that are of the main concern.”