Trump warns China of ‘big problems’—but here’s how China and Russia could be helping Iran
Recent reports suggest China and Russia may have been indirectly helping its ally Iran in its war against the U.S. and Israel, and might be gearing up to supply Iran with weapons or more.
Key Facts
Both the New York Times and CNN reported in the last week that China was preparing to ship new air defense systems to Iran, citing sources familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments.
These would include new shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, according to both reports, similar to the device President Donald Trump said Iranians used to shoot down an F-15 fighter jet earlier in April.
When asked by reporters about reports of China sending the weapons, the president said Saturday that “if China does that, China will have big problems, OK?”
The Chinese government denied to CNN and the Times it intends to send weapons to Iran.
Russia, meanwhile, has reportedly supplied Iran with military intelligence, including satellite images of U.S. bases in the Middle East before they were targeted by strikes, according to Ukrainian intelligence assessments reported by Reuters last week.
Speaking to a British podcast after the Ukrainian intelligence was made public, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he did not receive a reaction from the U.S., adding, “the problem is they trust Putin.”
There have been unverified reports that Iran has been charging fees to allow ships to pass through the strait since mid-March. Among the slow trickle of foreign ships have been able to travel safely through it: Those owned by China and Russia. China, India, Pakistan and the Philippines, according to the BBC, have gone through the passage, and on Friday a Russian-flagged oil tanker made it through apparently without any difficulty. Iran has signalled it wants to charge ships tolls using cryptocurrency to use the strait in the future, with a spokesperson for the country’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union telling the Wall Street Journal last week this could be a tariff of $1 per barrel. On Sunday, Trump threatened to interdict any ships in international waters that paid a toll to Iran, raging in a Truth Social post “no one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.”
Earlier on Sunday, President Donald Trump announced a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—the critical waterway that Iran shut down early in the war and throttled the flow of oil and other commodities out of the Persian Gulf. The shutdown has caused global oil prices to soar. The International Energy Association estimated about 25% of all oil shipped by sea in 2025 traveled through the Strait of Hormuz. Asian countries have been hit particularly hard—the IEA estimated that 80% of the oil from the Strait of Hormuz in 2025 was headed toward the continent. Any further disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz could further antagonize China, Iran’s biggest oil customer. China bought an estimated 80% of Iran’s oil in 2025, according to data from shipping analytics firm Kpler reported by Reuters—about 1.38 million barrels of Iranian oil per day.
