Two ships owned by an Iranian company that the United States has accused of supplying materials to Tehran’s ballistic missile program departed from a Chinese chemical storage port this week, loaded with cargo and heading toward Iran, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The ships, the Shabdis and the Barzin, belong to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), a state-owned company under U.S., British, and European Union sanctions.

The ships had been docked at the Gaolan port in Zhuhai, located on China’s southeastern coast. According to experts quoted by The Post, Gaolan is a loading port for chemicals, including sodium perchlorate, a key precursor for solid rocket fuel Iran needs for its missile program.

The two ships are expected to reach Iran this coming Saturday, unless they are sunk by the United States.

China’s decision to allow the ships to sail to Iran amid a war with the US is significant.

“China could have held these vessels at port, imposed an administrative delay, invented a customs hold—any number of bureaucratic tools—but didn’t,” Isaac Kardon, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Post. “That’s a deliberate policy choice made during an active war in which Beijing publicly calls for restraint.”

Grant Rumley, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, expressed similar sentiments, focusing on China’s ties with Gulf states: “With missiles and drones raining down on Gulf states, any show of support like this towards Iran risks souring China’s relations with a number of Gulf countries,” he said. “It’s an uncharacteristically bold strategy.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)