Thomas Gormley
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.
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