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Two Iranian cargo ships carrying a critical chemical component of rocket fuel will sail from China to Iran within the next few weeks, according to intelligence from security officials in two Western countries.

The two Iranian-flagged ships – Golbon and Jeeran – are expected to carry more than 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, which is used to make ammonium perchlorate, the main component of solid fuel for missiles.

Two officials said sodium perchlorate could produce 960 tons of ammonium perchlorate, which makes up 70 percent of the propellant for solid-fuel rockets. The officials added that this amount of ammonium perchlorate could produce 1,300 tons of propellant, which is enough to fuel 260 Iranian medium-range missiles such as the Khaybar Shikan or Haj Qassem.

Ammonium perchlorate is among the chemicals controlled by the Missile Technology Export Control System, an international body to combat the spread of nuclear weapons.

Two of the officials said the chemicals were shipped to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite arm of the Iranian military.

The two officials said that 34 20-foot containers containing the chemical were loaded aboard the ship Golbun, which departed from China’s Dishan Island on Tuesday. The Jiran is expected to leave China with 22 containers in early February. The two ships, owned by Iranian entities, are expected to make the three-week trip to… Iran Officials said no port calls were made.

Officials said the chemicals were loaded onto a Golpoon ship at the port of Taicang just north of Shanghai, and were destined for Bandar Abbas, a port in southern Iran on the Persian Gulf.

Based on data from ship tracking company Marine Traffic,… Golbon It spent at least several days off Deschamps Island before leaving on Tuesday. It showed marine traffic neighbors About 75 kilometers south of Dechan off the coast of Ningbo in China’s Zhejiang province early Wednesday.

Officials were unable to determine whether Beijing was aware of the shipments. The United States and its allies have often criticized China for providing support to regimes from Tehran to Moscow.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said it was “not aware” of the situation and that Beijing was committed to “maintaining peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf region and actively working to promote the political and diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue.”

The Iranian government refused to comment.

Dennis Wilder, a former senior China analyst at the CIA, said China carried out large-scale arms sales to Iran dating back to 1979, including the supply of “Silkworm” anti-ship missiles in 1986 during the Iran-Iraq War.

“Since the early 1990s, China has extensively assisted the Iranian military in its ballistic missile development program and provided it with expertise, technology, spare parts and training,” said Wilder, who now works at Georgetown University.

China’s motives for secretly helping Iran today include secretly helping Iran produce missiles for the Russian war effort [in Ukraine]And consolidating the common cause against perceived American hegemony. . . Beijing annually buys large quantities of Iranian crude oil at a discount.

Washington has also criticized China for violating US sanctions by buying Iranian oil, but critics of the Biden administration say it has not done enough to enforce the sanctions.

The United States has also increased pressure on Beijing over the past two years not to do more to stop the shipment of dual-use items to Russia that aided Moscow in its large-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the volume of shipments showed little signs of declining.