The drones used by Tehran-backed militia groups across the Middle East are supplied by China, a senior US official said.
United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that Beijing has been pushing sales of its military drones to Arab countries and Iran.
"It is an irony, I am the first to say, that those UAVs that these [Iranian] proxies use are Chinese… They are not provided by the state, but the state doesn't attempt to curtail that flow," she said.
According to the official Tehran gets the drones from China and distributes them to its proxy groups across the region.
“The regime in Tehran is itself so supremely isolated and not just because of our sanctions — it’s isolated because of its own actions, its own predatory destructive behavior within [the country] as well as the larger region,” she noted.
Many countries, including Israel, accuse the Islamic Republic of providing its proxies with drones and other military equipment.
