The quiet arrival of hundreds of Chinese shoulder-fired air defense missiles in Iran marks a decisive inflection point in the high-stakes confrontation between Washington and Tehran. As Iranian military infrastructure reels from months of unrelenting American and Israeli aerial bombardment, Beijing has intervened not with grand diplomatic summits or heavy battle tanks, but with portable, low-altitude lethality. This covert infusion of short-range air defense capabilities directly challenges Western air supremacy in the Persian Gulf, transforming what Washington envisioned as a swift campaign of air dominance into a fraught, asymmetric war of attrition. Routinely masked behind multi-layered corporate structures, the transaction, valued at between $60 million and $70 million, involves the delivery of 300 to 400 advanced Man-Portable Air Defense Systems [...]
