“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told ABC News’s Martha Raddatz on March 16th.
Waltz’s demand was in fact more comprehensive. He said that Iran must also hand over, among other things, missiles and uranium enrichment capability.
China helped Iran possess both. Beijing has set the stage for the next war in the Middle East.
On missiles, there is no doubt where Tehran got its delivery systems. “Most of Iran’s liquid-fueled ballistic missiles, including all its longest-range ones, are North Korean missiles with new paint,” Bruce Bechtol, author of North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa: Enabling Violence and Instability, told Gatestone.
“The missiles are probably why Trump is now dealing with Iran’s nukes.”
And where did North Korea get the technology that it sold to Iran? Some came from China. “The North’s submarine-launched KN-11 looks awfully like China’s Jl-1,” said Bechtol.
Pyongyang could not have sold missiles to Iran — and certainly could not transport them through Chinese airspace — without Beijing’s approval.
On enrichment, China proliferated directly and indirectly.
Indirectly, it proliferated through the nuclear black market ring headed by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. China, sometime around 1974, started helping Pakistan build a nuclear device. As proliferation analysts note, China’s help was crucial, substantial and continuous.
Then, the infamous Khan, known as the father of the Pakistani bomb, merchandised China’s technology, including China’s blueprints for at least one warhead, to various countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Iran was one of Khan’s customers, especially for parts for centrifuges, the machines that purify uranium to bomb-grade. Khan used Chinese military installations to facilitate transfers to Iran.
Apart from transfers through the Khan ring, China directly dealt with the Iranian regime. For instance, a Chinese enterprise, Zheijiang Ouhai Trade Corp., arranged the surreptitious transfer of “critical valves and vacuum gauges” to Iran for use in its uranium enrichment program. Before that, another Chinese entity was involved in the sale to Iran of 108 pressure transducers, instruments that monitor gas centrifuges.
