A leading Chinese tech company will be supplying advanced spy technology to Iran, as the country is struggling to improve its security amid nationwide protests against Ali Khamenei's hardline regime.
The news does not come as a surprise because both countries committed to a 25-year economic agreement worth $400 billion last year. According to IVPM, a security group that oversees the surveillance industry, Chinese company Tiandy will assist Iran's security sector in tackling the mass protests that have intensified in the past few days.
The Chinese manufacturer has also signed a five-year plan with an Iranian distributor and is the only China-based surveillance company to have a direct presence in the Middle Eastern country.
"While other PRC video surveillance gear is available in Iran via various distributors, IPVM could not find such a direct presence from Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview," the security group added.
Noting that this Tehran-Beijing partnership might be violating US sanctions, IPVM suspects a direct business relation between the PRC manufacturer and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC handles border as well as internal security matters of the country.
Bryan Leib, executive director of Iranian Americans for Liberty, a pro-democracy advocacy group that supports Iranian protesters, believes that it was highly predictable of Iran and China to further strengthen their relations while the US continues with its streak of failed talks with Tehran, under President Joe Biden, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The surveillance pipeline and close ties between the two countries is being thoroughly reviewed and analysed in the Congress, this is because any Sino-Iranian security cooperation represents a serious threat to core US, Israeli and Gulf Arab security interests.
Senator Marsha Blackburn has therefore planned to come up with a new nuclear deal with Iran, following which the country will have to sever ties with China, if it wants to take advantage of the 'sanctions relief' accompanying the deal.
In the light of the same, an Iran-China Accountability Act was introduced last week by Blackburn and a few other Republican senators, which would 'prevent the implementation of any new nuclear deal' with Iran until it renounces all relations with the East Asian country.
