A US special operations unit last month boarded a vessel in the Indian Ocean and seized military-related items bound for Iran from China in a rare at-sea interdiction, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday citing US officials.
The US operatives boarded the ship when it was several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka and confiscated the cargo before letting the vessel proceed, the report added.
Washington had been tracking the shipment, according to officials speaking to the Wall Street Journal.
This was the first time in recent years the US military is known to have intercepted an Iran-bound cargo with Chinese origins.
Last month, two Democratic members of the United States Congress urged the Secretary of State and CIA Director to investigate a large shipment of missile propellant precursor material from China to Iran.
Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Joe Courtney sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, calling for a probe into Chinese firms' delivery of 2,000 tons of sodium perchlorate - a critical ingredient in making ballistic missile propellant - to Iran since late September in violation of UN sanctions.
The chemical shipped via 10 to 12 vessels to Bandar Abbas port, could fuel up to 500 mid-range missiles, accelerating Tehran's arsenal rebuild after a 12-day war with Israel in June, the congressmen said based on report previously appeared on CNN.
The letter said the shipments contravene September's reinstated UN sanctions prohibiting support for Iran's ballistic missile program and nuclear delivery systems.
“Beijing's aid enables Tehran's post-war rearmament efforts despite US efforts to deter such transfers,” the lawmakers said.
In April the US Treasury sanctioned several Iranian and Chinese entities for facilitating transfers of sodium perchlorate and similar chemical precursors to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) for ballistic missile production.
However, the two lawmakers said that “April Treasury sanctions on Iranian and Chinese entities failed to halt the flow, as shipments continued unabated with another 1,000 tons delivered in June.”
Iran has rejected reported US demands that it curb the range of its missiles to achieve any peace deal, calling the requests a non-starter which curbs its defense.
"There is no greater honor than seeing self-proclaimed superpowers kneel before an Iranian drone and copy it,” Abolfazl Shekarchi said.
The senior spokesman for Iran's armed forces was referring to an announcement last week from the Pentagon that it would field a new fleet of one-way attack drones in the Middle East modeled on a captured Iranian Shahed.
Tehran’s reaction followed an announcement by US Central Command that it would deploy to the region the new drone squadron using LUCAS platforms—low-cost systems developed after US companies dismantled and reverse-engineered a damaged Shahed drone obtained years earlier.
CENTCOM said the drones can operate autonomously, launch from multiple platforms and are intended to beef up its supply of cheap lethal unmanned aerial vehicles which are widely viewed as the future of warfare.
Iran submitted the Shahed's design to Russia for use in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which under the name Geran-2 has been mass-produced to wreak havoc on cities and battlefields there.
US defense officials told CNN and other outlets that the drone deployment marks an effort to “flip the script” after years in which Iran and its armed allies used cheap drones to strike US positions, including the 2024 attack in Jordan blamed on Iraqi militias that killed three American soldiers.
Washington’s belated push into mass-manufactured, expendable drones comes as low-cost platforms increasingly dominate conflicts from Ukraine to the Red Sea.
US officials have not disclosed the number of LUCAS drones now in the region, saying only that “many” are already deployed and more are coming.
At roughly $35,000 apiece, they remain far more expensive than models produced in Iran, China or Russia, raising questions among analysts about whether the Pentagon can scale fast enough or cheaply enough to match its adversaries’ output.
'Thorn in the throat'
Iran's military spokesman said the US and Israel’s recent threats against Tehran were “delusional,” insisting that the brief war in June had shown how such threats collapse “in the real field of battle.”
Shekarchi said Iran’s forces—particularly the Revolutionary Guard's Aerospace Force—remain “a thorn in the throat of the hegemonic system.”
Defense analysts say the Shahed’s simple design and low unit cost compared with hundreds of thousands for Western equivalents have driven global efforts to produce cheaper unmanned systems.
Western governments have imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Iranian drone manufacturers and procurement networks, accusing Tehran of supplying drones to Russia and regional armed groups.
Iran has denied direct involvement in combat operations abroad, saying its technology serves defensive purposes.
In a statement on Tuesday, the embassy said “unscrupulous individuals” had been spreading fake letters online, offering Iranian men aged 18 to 45 contracts “to serve with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the area of the special military operation.”
“The embassy officially declares that this letter and any similar document are forgeries of a criminal nature,” the statement said. “Neither the embassy nor any official Russian institution has any connection with them.”
The denial followed a report by the Tehran-based outlet Rouydad24, which said that leaflets distributed near the Russian Embassy in Tehran invited Iranian men to join the Russian army with promises of dollar payments and contracts “directly under the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.”
The flyers, seen around College Square, targeted men aged 18 to 45 and offered starting bonuses of $15,000 to $18,000 and monthly salaries of $2,500 to $2,800, along with free housing, medical care, and military uniforms.
Rouydad24 said the leaflets directed readers to a Telegram channel that had published multilingual posts in Persian, Russian, Arabic, and English, describing the campaign as a “state-supported initiative.”
One video shared by the channel appeared to show a man in a Russian military uniform introducing himself in Persian as “Mohammadian Khatibi, from Iran.”
The Iranian report compared the flyers to similar alleged recruitment efforts in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and several African countries, which foreign media have described as part of Moscow’s drive to attract foreign fighters amid heavy losses in Ukraine.
While the embassy has now categorically denied any such activity in Iran, Rouydad24 noted that the case underscores the vulnerability of economically distressed Iranians to online recruitment scams offering large foreign payouts.
