THE ARTICLE · 11 MIN
First written March 2026. Brought up to date on 29 September 2026. This page describes a war that is still going on. Everything below is dated to the source it comes from; anything that depends on the state of the fighting may have moved since. It describes; it does not predict.
The Sino-Iranian Strategic Nexus Amidst Global Conflict (2024-2026)
Between April 2024 and February 2026, the long-running shadow conflict between Iran and Israel turned into open war. The United States struck Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025, and from 28 February 2026 it went to war with Iran directly. Through all of it, China remained the main buyer of Iran’s oil and defended Iran diplomatically.
This page sets out what the sources show about that relationship: the oil trade, the 25-year partnership, reported arms deals, China’s diplomacy, and the money. It ends with where the war stood on 29 September 2026.
The Escalation Continuum: From Shadow War to Decapitation (2024-2026)
- April 2024. Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles from its own territory towards Israel, most of which were intercepted, according to the UN. Iran said it was responding to an attack on its diplomatic premises in Damascus on 1 April.
- July 2024. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran.
- Late September 2024. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Israeli airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
- June 2025. The IAEA said Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations. From 13 June 2025 Israel struck Iran’s nuclear programme, missile sites and energy facilities, and Iran fired missiles and drones back. On 22 June the United States struck three Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordow. A ceasefire announced by President Trump took effect on 24 June 2025. The Commons Library describes the episode as joint strikes “over 12 days”.
- August-September 2025. On 28 August 2025 the UK, France and Germany triggered the “snapback” mechanism of the 2015 nuclear deal. Six earlier UN sanctions resolutions on Iran were reinstated from 27 September 2025.
- February 2026. On 27 February, Oman’s foreign minister, who had mediated talks between the US and Iran, said that “a peace deal is within our reach”. The next day, 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched strikes on Iran; the US operation was named Operation Epic Fury. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed in the strikes. Iran responded by attacking US bases in the region, Israel and sites in neighbouring states, and by closing the Strait of Hormuz.
Domestic Fragility and the Economic Crisis of 2026
Protests began on 28 December 2025, after a sharp collapse of Iran’s currency, starting with shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. According to the UN fact-finding mission on Iran, they reached all of Iran’s 31 provinces. Amnesty International describes the killing of thousands of protesters by security forces on 8 and 9 January 2026, thousands more arrests, and a shutdown of internet access from 8 January.
Executions rose sharply before that. Amnesty International recorded at least 2,159 executions in Iran in 2025, more than double its 2024 figure. Iran drove a global total that Amnesty calls the highest it has recorded since 1981.
On 8 March 2026 Iran’s Assembly of Experts announced that Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei’s son, would succeed his father as supreme leader. The UK government said the choice “suggests no change in direction from Iran”. In the UK House of Commons Library’s account (April 2026), he had not appeared in public since taking office.
The Sino-Iranian Energy Nexus: A Strategic Lifeblood
China is the main buyer of Iranian oil. Estimates of how dependent Iran is on that one customer differ with the source:
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| China’s imports of Iranian crude, 2025 | 1.38 million barrels per day | Kpler, cited by Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy |
| Share of Iran’s shipped oil bought by China, 2025 | more than 80% | Kpler, cited by Al Jazeera |
| Share of Iran’s oil exports going to China | more than 90% | US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, cited by the House of Commons Library |
| Iranian crude as part of China’s seaborne imports, 2025 | about 1.4 of 10.4 million barrels per day | Kpler, cited by Al Jazeera |
That last line works out at about 13% of China’s seaborne crude imports: a large supplier, but a minority of the total. The Commons Library adds that oil exports provide around a third of Iran’s annual state revenue.
The oil arrives under other names. China’s customs agency has not recorded any oil imports from Iran since 2022. Many Iranian barrels are relabelled as Malaysian: China imported 1.3 million barrels a day of “Malaysian” crude in 2025, while Malaysia produced 535,000 barrels a day in 2024, according to the Columbia analysis. Al Jazeera describes the small independent refineries known as “teapots”, mostly in Shandong province, as the channel for discounted Iranian and Russian oil.
China had a cushion. As of early January 2026 it held 1.206 billion barrels of oil in onshore storage, enough for 104 days of net crude imports at the 2025 level, by the Columbia estimate.
The war changed the flow. In June 2026, under the US-Iran memorandum, the US Treasury issued a waiver for Iranian oil exports running until 21 August 2026. In August 2026, Reuters reported that offers of Iranian crude to Chinese buyers had fallen as the US blockade took hold.
Beyond Oil: The 25-Year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP)
Iran and China signed a 25-year strategic accord on 27 March 2021. It is often described as a plan for US$400 billion of Chinese investment in Iran’s energy, banking, telecommunications and transport, in return for a regular supply of oil. That figure is reported, not confirmed: in April 2021, analysts at Brandeis University’s Crown Center noted that the terms and details of the agreement remained unknown, and that some commentators were relying on an earlier leaked draft. We found no published text of the signed agreement.
Military and Security Cooperation: The Defense Dimension
Four reports stand out. None is a confirmed transaction.
- Missile fuel chemicals, early 2025. In February 2025, CNN reported, citing two European intelligence sources, that a ship had left China with most of a 1,000-ton shipment of sodium perchlorate, the main precursor of the solid propellant for Iran’s mid-range missiles. The sources estimated it was enough for about 260 motors for Kheibar Shekan missiles.
- Anti-ship missiles, 2026. In February 2026, Reuters reported that Iran was close to a deal to buy Chinese CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles, after negotiations that had run for at least two years and sped up after the June 2025 war. Whether a deal was completed is not established in the sources we read.
- Air-defence missiles, 2026. In July 2026, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources and as summarised by Newsweek, that Iran had signed a US$60–70 million deal through a Hong Kong-based intermediary for 300–400 Chinese shoulder-fired air-defence missile systems.
- Components, 2026. In September 2026, The Wall Street Journal reported, as summarised by Iran International, that Chinese suppliers had sent around 1,300 shipments of dual-use components to Iran’s defence ministry in the first half of 2026.
Impact on International Relations: The “Axis of Upheaval”
“Axis of upheaval” is a phrase from Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine, writing in Foreign Affairs in April 2024, for the growing coordination among China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. Three examples of that coordination on the Iran file:
- Joint drills. China, Iran and Russia held the “Security Belt 2025” naval exercise near Iran’s Chabahar port in March 2025. China sent the guided-missile destroyer Baotou.
- Words. On 1 March 2026, China’s foreign ministry called the killing of Khamenei “a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty and security” and said China “firmly opposes and strongly condemns it”.
- Votes. On 7 April 2026, China and Russia vetoed a Bahraini-drafted Security Council resolution on the Strait of Hormuz. In March they had abstained on a separate resolution, S/RES/2817 (2026), which passed and demanded an end to attacks by Iran and its proxies on Arab states.
What the sources do not show is China fighting for Iran. Earlier in the war, the Commons Library notes, China was among the countries that declined US requests to help secure Hormuz while hostilities went on. In July 2026 Newsweek described Beijing as having “limited its direct involvement in the conflict”, while, according to Reuters and other media reports, providing Iran with satellite imagery of US military targets around the Gulf.
Trade Realignments and Financial Architecture: De-Dollarization
The war put payment channels outside the US dollar to use.
- Hormuz tolls. From mid-March 2026, according to the analytics firm TRM Labs as reported by Fortune, Iran’s military charged ships up to $2 million each to transit the strait, accepting Chinese yuan, bitcoin and potentially the stablecoin USDT. TRM Labs said at the time that it was not seeing on-chain evidence that tolls were being paid in crypto at scale. The Commons Library reports that some ships had paid in yuan, and that the US sanctioned Iran’s new strait authority.
- The renminbi’s share. In the Bank for International Settlements’ 2025 survey, the renminbi’s share of global foreign exchange turnover rose to 8.5% in April 2025, continuing a rise since 2013.
Where things stand, 29 September 2026
- The war has paused and restarted. On 8 April 2026, Pakistan’s prime minister announced a conditional two-week ceasefire, later extended. On 17 June the US and Iran signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding, which set an initial 60-day period for talks on Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes and sanctions.
- The memorandum broke down. On 8 July, after Iranian attacks on commercial ships, US strikes on Iran resumed, and President Trump said he thought the memorandum was “over”. Its 60-day period ran out in mid-August, with little sign that either side wanted to extend it, according to Al Jazeera.
- Hormuz traffic has picked up, and estimates of how much differ. Iranian attacks on shipping have sharply curtailed traffic through the strait, and the United States maintains a blockade of Iranian ports in some form. On 28 September Al Jazeera reported that the US military had moved “considerably more energy shipments” through the strait in recent weeks, though the waterway was “still far away from its pre-war unimpeded state”, and set out three estimates against roughly 20 million barrels a day before the war: Kpler expected crude exports through the strait to average 7.4 million barrels a day in September; the US Energy Secretary said nearly 13 million barrels of crude a day were passing; and the US Treasury Secretary gave 15–22 million. They do not all measure the same thing, and they come from parties with different stakes. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say the strait stays closed to vessels that do not coordinate passage with Iranian authorities. Before the war, around 20% of global petroleum passed through the strait each year, according to the Commons Library.
- The latest proposal was rejected. On 25 September Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, presented a plan to reopen the strait within seven days if the US released frozen funds, lifted oil sanctions and ended its blockade. On 26 September President Trump said it “would not be acceptable”.
What this snapshot does and does not show
On the evidence above, China’s part in this war has been as a customer, a diplomat and, by report, a supplier, not a combatant. It bought most of Iran’s oil, defended Iran in words and at the Security Council, and its currency features in some of the payment workarounds. The reported arms and component deals remain reports.
What the snapshot cannot tell you is how the war ends. That is why this page is dated, and why the figures above each name their source and their date: a reader checking a claim here later should check it against the newest version of that source.
Sources
Conflict and diplomacy
- House of Commons Library: Israel/US-Iran conflict 2026: Background and UK response (24 April 2026); Reopening the Strait of Hormuz (8 June 2026); US-Iran ceasefire and nuclear talks 2026 (2 July 2026); Iran: Impacts of June 2025 Israel and US strikes and outlook (22 July 2025).
- UN News: April 2024 Security Council session; 31 July 2024; 1 October 2024.
- UK Government: E3 joint statement on the activation of the snapback (28 September 2025); UK reimposes UN sanctions on Iran (1 October 2025).
- US Department of State, Office of the Legal Adviser: Operation Epic Fury and International Law (21 April 2026).
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China: spokesperson’s remarks on the killing of Ali Khamenei (1 March 2026).
- Al Jazeera: Why have US-Iran strikes resumed? (8 July 2026); US-Iran MoU ends: What happens next? (16 August 2026); Trump rejects Iran’s seven-day roadmap (26 September 2026). NPR, Trump rejects plan to reopen Strait of Hormuz (26 September 2026).
Iran at home
- Amnesty International: What happened at the protests in Iran? (26 January 2026); Executions surge to highest recorded figure in 44 years (May 2026).
China, oil and money
- Erica Downs, Where China Gets Its Oil: Crude Imports in 2025, Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University (29 January 2026).
- Al Jazeera, How China’s ‘teapot’ refineries are cushioning it from Iran war oil crisis (3 April 2026).
- The China-Global South Project, Reuters report on Iranian oil offers to China (21 August 2026).
- Brandeis University, Crown Center, The Iranian-Chinese Strategic Partnership: Why Now and What it Means (28 April 2021).
- Newsweek, China sending weapons to Iran despite Trump’s faith in Xi: report (29 July 2026), summarising Reuters.
- Iran International, China shipments help sustain Iran’s weapons programs despite US pressure - WSJ (24 September 2026).
- Al Jazeera, Iran touts Hormuz attacks as oil flows increase despite tensions (28 September 2026).
- CNN, Iran is rearming its missile program and a ship of supplies just arrived from China (13 February 2025).
- Defence Industry Europe, report of Reuters’ CM-302 story (26 February 2026).
- Center for a New American Security, The Axis of Upheaval (23 April 2024; first published in Foreign Affairs).
- Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, “Security Belt 2025” naval exercise wraps up (14 March 2025).
- Fortune, Iran is demanding tankers in the Strait of Hormuz pay tolls in crypto (10 April 2026).
- Bank for International Settlements, OTC foreign exchange turnover in April 2025.
Checked September 2026. This page is a snapshot of an unfinished war, read on 29 September 2026.