A US military special force raided a ship carrying a military shipment from China | N12

A special force of the United States Army raided a ship in the Indian Ocean last month and confiscated an unusual military shipment from China destined for Iran, it was reported tonight (between Friday and Saturday) in the Wall Street General. This is an unusual action designed to curb Tehran’s efforts to restore its ballistic missile project that was damaged in the last war with Israel. The report joins a series of publications that Iran is tightening its military cooperation with China.

According to American officials, the ship was located a few hundred kilometers from the coast of Sri Lanka, where the special forces fighters raided it, confiscated the cargo – and then allowed the vessel to continue on its way. According to those sources, the United States had been monitoring the shipment for a period of time, based on intelligence gathered before the raid. This is the first time in recent years that the United States has boycotted a military shipment from China destined to reach Iran.

According to one of the American officials quoted in the report, the shipment included dual-use components – those that can be used for both civilian and military purposes, and were intended for companies in the Islamic Republic that are involved in the missile project. The same official added that after their confiscation, the components were destroyed.

Another American official and a source familiar with the details of the operation said that the intelligence gathered in the United States indicated that the shipment was intended to reach Iranian companies specializing in the procurement of components for the Iranian missile program.

The report in the Wall Street Journal comes a few days after the United States announced that it had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela destined for Iran. Yesterday, the media in Iran already reported that the security forces seized a tanker with six million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Oman.

In the shadow of the events, criticism is growing in the United States that China is selling Iran components intended for the restoration of its missile program. A few days before the war between Israel and Iran broke out, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Islamic Republic had ordered from Beijing thousands of tons of raw materials for the production of ballistic missiles, which could be used to develop up to 800 missiles. The shipments, it was noted in the report at the time, mainly include ammonium perchlorate – an oxidizing agent used in solid fuel for ballistic missiles, which will arrive in Iran in the coming months.

Raw materials for the production of ballistic missiles, mainly ammonium perchlorate, arrived in Iran on several different occasions throughout the last year. Western intelligence sources confirmed to CNN: “Iran is restoring its missile program with the help of China – despite the renewal of UN sanctions that are supposed to prevent this.” Since the renewal of sanctions on Tehran, several ships have been recorded arriving from China and docking at the Bandar Abbas port in Iran with a load of perchlorate.