5 Hard Truths for Trump About How Russia and China Help Iran

By Shane Croucher

Are Russia and China helping Iran in its war with the United States? President Donald Trump was clear in his latest answer to a question that keeps resurfacing.

"If they are, it’s at a very low level, but I don’t believe they are at all," Trump wrote on Truth Social late Monday. "They have too much to lose, and we would know about it, and know about it very fast!"

The trouble is the U.S. does already know about it. Trump’s own administration has been saying so for months—in sanctions notices, in Senate testimony, in warnings delivered to Beijing. But such help for Tehran is calibrated to be deniable.

Perhaps Moscow and Beijing have backed off under intensifying pressure from Washington, which has largely taken the form, publicly at least, of the threat of punishing economic sanctions.

Trump has been in deal-making mode, too, when Chinese President Xi Jinping came to town in September and last week to secure Russian President Vladimir Putin’s diesel. Cutting aid for Tehran may have been on the table.

But the truth is Tehran could not have got this far into the conflict with the U.S. without assistance from both China and Russia, two pillars of the anti-Western bloc of which Iran is also a significant player.

Here are five hard truths for Trump about how China and Russia have helped—and are still helping—Iran.

1. China Has Been Iran’s Financial Lifeline

Wars run on money, and Iran’s vital oil revenue has come overwhelmingly from China.

Chinese "teapot" refineries buy most of Iran’s crude, the Treasury Department said in April, providing "a vital source of revenue" to the regime and its armed forces.

China took more than 80 percent of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025. This is according to Kpler data cited in a September Reuters investigation that described a barter-like channel turning Iranian crude into credits for Chinese goods.

Its sources estimated that $2 billion to $2.5 billion moved through the scheme’s payment vehicle in the past year.

They claimed it was used at least once for air-defense contracts. Beijing denied the arrangement.

Since July, America’s naval blockade has throttled the trade. That is Trump’s achievement, not Beijing’s restraint.

China is still purchasing Iranian oil already stored at sea outside of the blockade zone, albeit at much lower levels than normal.

2. Chinese Satellites Watched US Forces

In May, the State Department sanctioned three China-based satellite and geospatial firms. It said one had supplied imagery to Iran during the U.S. campaign and another had photographed U.S. and allied military facilities to fill Iranian requests.

It vowed to hold China-based entities accountable for their "support to Iran"—the very thing the president says isn’t happening.

In September, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal they had linked imagery Iran obtained from Chinese entities to the July 17 missile strike on Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base that killed three U.S. soldiers.

The officials did not accuse Beijing itself, and China demanded evidence. Trump’s response, aboard Air Force One, was a kind of acceptance: "They basically do what we do."

3. Russian Satellites Scouted US Bases

A Ukrainian intelligence assessment reviewed by Reuters in April found that Russian satellites made at least 24 imagery surveys of 46 sites across 11 Middle Eastern countries between March 21 and 31.

It also found that bases were targeted by Iranian missiles and drones within days of being surveyed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on July 25 that Kyiv would share with its partners intelligence on "Russia’s new assistance to the Iranian regime."

"Since the beginning of July, we have recorded active Russian satellite surveillance of the Gulf states and U.S. military facilities located there," said Zelensky. His country is at war with Russia and leans heavily on U.S. military and intelligence support.

"These images subsequently appear in Iran," Zelensky continued. He said there is a "clear correlation" between this imaging and Iranian strikes. He linked recent attacks on four allied air bases in Bahrain, Jordan, and Kuwait to "the area of interest of Russian satellites."

A Western military source and a regional security source told Reuters their own intelligence showed intense Russian satellite activity and that imagery had been shared with Iran.

In the starkest case, which the regional source confirmed, a Russian satellite imaged Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia days before Iran’s March 27 strike hit a U.S. E-3 Sentry surveillance plane.

Orbital data from a U.S. space-tracking firm showed repeated Russian passes over the Gulf, though, it cautioned, a pass is not proof of a photograph.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied assisting Iran in this way.

4. The Arms Pipeline Is Flowing

In March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acknowledged that Russia has a military-technical cooperation agreement with Iran and has supplied it with certain types of military equipment.

Western intelligence assessments cited by the Financial Times said Russia was close to completing a phased shipment of drones to Iran. The Kremlin dismissed the reports as fabrications.

An investigation in September by the same publication, based on "leaked Russian correspondence, travel records and analysis of military patents," found that Russia is aiding Iran's development of supersonic cruise missiles.

China’s channel is more commercial, but no less real. Trump said in July that Xi’s pledge not to arm Iran—also allegedly agreed to by Putin—covered Chinese companies, too.

His State Department had already described a Belarus-based middleman facilitating the purchase of hundreds of shoulder-fired air-defense systems and their shipment from China to Iran.

In September, Treasury sanctioned an Iranian defense ministry representative in Beijing who, it said, coordinates purchases of finished weapons systems there. Beijing has denied reports of Chinese arms sales to Iran.

5. Washington Already Admits It Knows

Trump says Washington would know. And it does. In July, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told senators as much regarding Russia and China aiding Iran during the current war.

"There’s definitely adversary alignment. Attempts to do so, and there are many ways that we deter that…and the depth and extent of it ought to remain classified," Hegseth said.

"But there are ways in which both of those countries are, at different levels, enabling some of the things Iran is doing."

During Xi’s state visit in September, Trump’s ambassador to Beijing, David Perdue, said the president had reiterated that any support for Iran, direct or indirect, was "totally unacceptable."

The same day, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that Chinese officials had assured Tehran they would not limit economic, political, or military ties under U.S. pressure.

Washington and its allies do not keep issuing warnings about things that aren’t happening.

On October 8, four days before Trump’s post, Treasury sanctioned what it called the remnants of Iran’s shadow fleet—with Hong Kong-based companies among the targets.

"Treasury is starving the tyrannical regime in Tehran of the money it uses to wage war in the region, and we will continue exposing those who enable the regime’s oil sales," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

That shows the work is ongoing, because the help for Iran continues.

What Would Prove Trump Right

Trump is right about one big thing in particular: neither power has joined the war overtly and decisively on the side of Iran.

The White House has said outside help hasn’t dented or hindered U.S. operations. And Trump administration officials have stopped short of accusing Beijing of directing what Chinese firms have supplied to Iran.

But it is hard to believe that, in a closed, tightly controlled system like China’s, such assistance doesn't carry Beijing’s tacit approval, at the very least.

That there is any gray here is deliberate: plausible deniability.

If Trump is right, and Russian and Chinese support for Iran is either immaterial or has sapped away entirely, then the evidence should quickly dry up, too.

So no new Chinese or Russian names should appear on U.S. sanctions lists, no Chinese-made launchers in Iranian hands, no more officials tying foreign imagery to American deaths.

Until then, Trump’s denial reads more like hope than anything else.