^{Bound for orbit: a rocket blasts off from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre in north-west China in June 2024 carrying the TEE-01B satellite}

Tehran deploys Chinese satel­lite to tar­get US bases across Middle East

▸ Craft bought by IRGC space force ▸ Images of mil­it­ary sites cap­tured ▸ Beijing denies involve­ment

FT REPORTERS Miles John­son, Peter Andringa, Alison Killing and Charles Clover in Lon­don and Demetri Sevastop­ulo in Wash­ing­ton. Addi­tional report­ing by Chris Camp­bell in Lon­don and Joe Leahy in Beijing

Iran secretly acquired a Chinese spy satel­lite that has given the Islamic repub­lic a power­ful cap­ab­il­ity to tar­get US mil­it­ary bases across the Middle East dur­ing the war, a Fin­an­cial Times invest­ig­a­tion has revealed.

Leaked Ira­nian mil­it­ary doc­u­ments show the satel­lite — TEE-01B — was acquired by the Islamic Revolu­tion­ary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force for about Rmb250mn ($36.6mn) in 2024 after its launch into space from China. The force over­sees Iran’s bal­listic mis­sile, drone and space pro­grammes.

Time-stamped co-ordin­ate lists, satel­lite imagery and orbital ana­lysis show that Ira­nian com­mand­ers have used the satel­lite to mon­itor US mil­it­ary sites. The images were taken in March before and after drone and mis­sile strikes on those loc­a­tions.

TEE-01B was built and launched by Earth Eye Co, a Chinese com­pany that offers “in-orbit deliv­ery”, a model under which space­craft launched in China are trans­ferred to over­seas cus­tom­ers after reach­ing orbit. As part of the agree­ment, the IRGC was gran­ted access to com­mer­cial ground sta­tions oper­ated by Emposat, a Beijing pro­vider of satel­lite con­trol and data ser­vices.

The use of a Chinese-built satel­lite by the IRGC dur­ing a war where Tehran has tar­geted its neigh­bours is highly sens­it­ive. China is the largest trad­ing part­ner of the Gulf coun­tries and the largest buyer of their oil.

The logs show that the satel­lite cap­tured images of Prince Sul­tan Air Base in Saudi Ara­bia on March 13, 14 and 15. On March 14, US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump con­firmed US planes at the base had been hit.

The satel­lite also con­duc­ted sur­veil­lance of Muwaf­faq Salti Air Base in Jordan, loc­a­tions close to the US Fifth Fleet naval base in Bahrain and Erbil air­port, Iraq, around the time of IRGC-claimed attacks on those areas.

“This satel­lite is clearly being used for mil­it­ary pur­poses as it is being run by the IRGC’s Aerospace Force and not Iran’s civil­ian space pro­gramme,” said Nicole Gra­jew­ski, an expert on Iran at Sci­ences Po uni­versity. “Iran really needs this for­eign-provided cap­ab­il­ity.”

Earth Eye Co says on its web­site that it has made one “in-orbit” trans­fer to an unnamed coun­try that was part of China’s Belt and Road Ini­ti­at­ive. Iran joined B&R in 2021. It adds that the satel­lite was inten­ded for use in “agri­cul­ture, ocean mon­it­or­ing, emer­gency man­age­ment, nat­ural resource super­vi­sion, and muni­cipal trans­port­a­tion”.

Under the deal, Emposat provides the IRGC with the soft­ware and net­work to run the satel­lite. These would allow the IRGC to dir­ect the satel­lite’s oper­a­tions from any­where in the world.

“This amounts to a dis­per­sion strategy for Iran’s space assets,” said Jim Lam­son, a former CIA ana­lyst focused on Iran and a senior research asso­ciate at the James Mar­tin Cen­ter for Non­pro­lif­er­a­tion Stud­ies. “Iran’s satel­lite ground sta­tions . . . can be hit very eas­ily. You can’t just hit a Chinese ground sta­tion loc­ated in another coun­try.”

China’s for­eign min­istry dis­missed the FT reports as “untrue”, adding: “Recently, cer­tain forces have been keen to fab­ric­ate rumours and mali­ciously link them to China.”

Earth Eye and Emposat did not respond to requests for com­ment.

The CIA declined to com­ment. The White House referred to com­ments Trump made at the week­end when he said China would face “big prob­lems” if it gave Iran air defence sys­tems.