IRGC Acquires High-Resolution Chinese Spy Satellite to Target U.S. Bases

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps secretly acquired a high-resolution Chinese spy satellite in late 2024 and used it to monitor and target United States military installations across the Middle East in the weeks before and during attacks in March 2026, the Financial Times reported on April 15, citing leaked Iranian military documents. The satellite, designated TEE-01B and built by Chinese company Earth Eye Co, was transferred to IRGC Aerospace Force control through an "in-orbit delivery" arrangement after being launched into orbit. Satellite logs, coordinate lists, and orbital analyses obtained by the Financial Times show that Iranian commanders directed the device to photograph Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on March 13, 14, and 15, 2026 — immediately before and after missile and drone strikes on the facility. Donald Trump, serving as the 47th president of the United States, confirmed on March 14 that American aircraft at the base had been damaged.

Chinese satellite gave Iran tenfold resolution upgrade The TEE-01B represented a significant intelligence upgrade for Iran, offering image resolution of approximately 0.5 meters compared to the 5-meter resolution of Iran's domestically developed Noor-3 satellite. That tenfold improvement allowed Iranian commanders to identify individual aircraft types, troop movements, and minor changes in base infrastructure — a level of detail previously unavailable to Iranian military planners. According to the Financial Times, the satellite was used to monitor a broad arc of targets, including Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the Duqm airport in Oman, U.S. Fifth Fleet facilities in Bahrain, and potential targets in Kuwait and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. At Prince Sultan Air Base, the attacks destroyed one E-3 AWACS radar aircraft and damaged another, according to de Volkskrant, which also reported that six tanker aircraft were damaged, most of them at the Saudi base. The transaction, according to de Volkskrant, cost approximately 31 million euros, while Article 0 from rmf24.pl cited a figure of approximately 36.6 million dollars, equivalent to 250 million yuan.

Iranian satellite intelligence capability: Image resolution (before: 5 meters (Noor-3, domestic), after: 0.5 meters (TEE-01B, Chinese)); Ground station vulnerability (before: Iranian ground stations, struck by Israeli bombing, after: Emposat global network, outside reach of Israeli or U.S. retaliation)

16 (aircraft) — Total U.S. E-3 AWACS aircraft in fleet, per de Volkskrant

Beijing-based Emposat gave Iran global satellite control Beyond the satellite itself, the IRGC gained access to commercial ground stations operated by Emposat, a Beijing-based satellite service provider, allowing Iranian operators to control the TEE-01B from any location in the world. This arrangement proved strategically significant because Iran's own domestic ground stations had been struck and damaged in Israeli bombing campaigns, according to de Volkskrant. The Financial Times asked the Chinese embassy in Washington whether the Chinese government was aware of the relationship between Emposat and the IRGC, and received a denial. Suspicions have also grown, according to the Czech outlet Seznam Zprávy citing the New York Times, that Iran may have access to China's BeiDou satellite navigation system — an alternative to the American GPS — which a U.S. congressional agency assessed may have been used to guide Iranian attacks last month. Nicole Grajewski, an Iran expert at Sciences Po in Paris, told the Financial Times that the satellite's military purpose was unambiguous given who operated it. „It is obvious that this satellite serves military purposes, because it is operated by the Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Force, not the civilian Iranian space program” — Nicole Grajewski via Financial Times

Beijing denies all, Trump claims Xi gave assurances China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian rejected the Financial Times report in full, and the Chinese embassy in Washington called the published information "disinformation based on guesswork and insinuation." „Media reports that accuse China of providing military support to Iran are entirely fabricated” — Lin Jian via Il Fatto Quotidiano Lin added that if the United States were to escalate its trade dispute with Beijing on the basis of these accusations, China would respond with countermeasures. The revelations emerged as the Trump administration was preparing for a presidential visit to Beijing next month, a trip that has already been postponed once. Trump told Fox News that he had heard China was providing weapons to Iran, that he had asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping not to do so, and that Xi had assured him that "substantially he is not doing it." American intelligence services separately suspect China of planning to deliver shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to Iran in the coming weeks, CNN reported last week, citing well-informed sources — a development that would further complicate the military situation given that Iran's air defenses have been largely eliminated in recent weeks.

The U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran, known as Operation Epic Fury, began on February 28, 2026, with strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. His son Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed Supreme Leader on March 9, 2026. Iran's domestic satellite program had previously relied on the Simorgh carrier rocket developed by its Ministry of Defense, which launched three satellites into orbit in 2024, according to Reuters as cited by Seznam Zprávy. Iran joined China's Belt and Road Initiative in 2021, and publicly available records show Earth Eye Co carried out at least one "in-orbit delivery" transfer to an unspecified Belt and Road member country.

Key events in the TEE-01B satellite affair: — ; — ; — ; — ; —