(WASHINGTON) – China and Russia have supplied Iran with material and intelligence support that has directly aided attacks killing American service members in recent months, according to analysis from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Bradley Bowman, senior director of the centre on military and political power at the foundation, co-author of the book Axis of Aggressors: Countering the Cooperation of China, Russia, Iran & North Korea, set out the details in a conversation with Preston Stewart. Russia has provided satellite imagery and other intelligence to Iran specifically to help target US forces.
It has also shared drone tactics, techniques and procedures learned from fighting in Ukraine, along with components. China has shipped chemical precursors including sodium perchlorate and ammonium perchlorate that fuel Iranian ballistic missiles. Both countries have transferred satellite capability usable for targeting, with China providing one to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
These flows form part of a wider pattern of security cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. After the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Iran was among the first to supply Shahed drones and other unmanned systems. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps advisers travelled to Crimea, and Iran later helped Russia establish a factory in Alabuga producing its own versions of those drones.
Support has since moved in multiple directions. Russia has assisted Iran’s space launch programme, enabling satellites that improve Iranian intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting. Reports also show Russia coordinating with others in earlier efforts to push American troops out of Syria and providing information via Iran to the Houthis for attacks on Red Sea shipping. China has focused on dual-use goods that can serve military ends while remaining below thresholds likely to trigger secondary sanctions.
Data compiled for the book covering 2019 to December 2025 recorded a tripling of security cooperation incidents between 2022 and 2023 across arms development, arms transfers, military exercises and deployments, intelligence sharing and military-to-military diplomacy. Russia featured in most of those incidents. The figures represent a minimum, as much activity remains opaque, particularly in cyber and intelligence domains.
During the 12-day conflict with Iran in June 2025, China and Russia offered little material support and did not reposition forces or transfer significant new weapons. Support increased markedly thereafter, with continued Chinese chemical shipments and stepped-up Russian assistance on drones and targeting.
Analysts note that all four members of the grouping have gained capacity, capability, readiness and resilience from the arrangement. North Korea has become more powerful than it has been in decades largely through Russian security assistance, while Russia’s war against Ukraine has drawn strength from the others.
The United States used roughly one quarter of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors during the short 2025 conflict with Iran. The Department of Defense has since requested large increases in key munitions, yet production capacity and congressional appropriations lag. Bowman and colleagues argue that the pattern validates warnings of an elevated risk of simultaneous great-power conflicts and unprecedented cooperation among the four states.
They set out recommendations spanning economic and financial measures to disrupt alternative payment systems, cyber capabilities, stronger homeland and forward-deployed missile defence, modernisation of the nuclear deterrent, reform of foreign military sales, greater reliance on direct commercial sales, and systematic tracking and disruption of the cooperation itself.
They stress the need to differentiate between the Iranian people and the regime and to avoid carving China out of any new sanctions effort, given the scale of Chinese purchases of Iranian oil. Without secondary sanctions and interdiction of dual-use and chemical flows, they warn, intercepting finished missiles alone will only worsen munitions shortages and increase American casualties.
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