Overview
- The disclosures, reported Wednesday by the Financial Times, cite leaked Iranian military documents that describe Tehran tasking a Chinese-built satellite to surveil U.S. and allied sites across the Middle East.
- The satellite is identified as TEE-01B, built by China’s Earth Eye Co. and launched in 2024, then transferred to Iran through an in‑orbit delivery model that hands ownership to a foreign client after the spacecraft reaches orbit.
- The files and independent analyses say the system produced roughly 0.5‑meter imagery that can spot aircraft, troop movements, and infrastructure changes, with logged passes over bases such as Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia, Muwaffaq Salti in Jordan, the U.S. Fifth Fleet facilities in Bahrain, and sites in Erbil around March.
- The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was granted access to Emposat’s commercial ground stations in China and abroad, a service that lets operators send commands to the satellite and quickly downlink data for targeting and battle damage checks.
- China’s embassy in Washington called the reporting disinformation and the foreign ministry denied providing military support to Iran, a stance that now faces added diplomatic scrutiny as the U.S. prepares a Trump visit to Beijing and as concerns grow over dual‑use space services.