Drones used by Iran-backed militias are coming from China, US says
Senior US official accuses Beijing of playing both sides in the Middle East’s race for drone technology.
Unmanned drones fired by Iran-backed militias at targets across the Middle East in recent years, sometimes with lethal effect, are being supplied from China, a senior US official revealed.
Barbara Leaf, the State Department’s top Middle East policy official, called it “an irony” that Beijing has been pushing sales of its military drones to Arab Gulf states while doing nothing to stem the flow of other Chinese-made drones to militias backed by Iran in the region.
“Those UAVs that those proxies use, they’re Chinese,” Leaf told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday. “Now they’re not provided by the state, but the state does not attempt to curtail that flow.”
Leaf offered no further details of the transfers. Neither the Chinese Embassy in Washington, the US State Department nor the US National Security Council returned Al-Monitor’s requests for comment by publication time.
