Reuters reported that “Iran is expected to receive within weeks a first shipment of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defence missile launchers” that will allegedly be sent via Pakistan. China and Pakistan predictably denied the report, and Trump earlier claimed that “President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies.”
Nevertheless, if the report is true, then Pakistan would be in a pickle. Reuters recently reported that Pakistan is seeking a multibillion-dollar bailout from the US, which recontextualized its US-Iranian mediation efforts as a bid to obtain the aforesaid instead of a selfless diplomatic service for regional peace. For those readers who are unaware, Pakistan has practiced a Sino-US balancing act for decades, but it’s been leaning much more heavily towards the US since April 2022’s post-modern coup.
The past nearly half-decade has seen the scaling back of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), and the deceleration of project implementation. In parallel, Pakistan entered into a rapid rapprochement with the US under Trump 2.0, which could lead to the US helping Pakistan fight terrorism in Afghanistan in exchange for Pakistan facilitating the return of the US’ military presence to Bagram Airbase like Trump wants and/or Central Asia.
Recently, “Lavrov Warned That Western Arms & Ammo Are Being Sent From Ukraine To ISIS-K In Afghanistan”, which could only realistically enter the country from Pakistan. This in turn lends credence to this assessment here from earlier in the spring regarding Russia’s latent threat perception of Pakistan. The relevance in referencing all of this is to underscore just how close Pakistan is with the US nowadays, much more so than with China, since everything that was just described advances the US’ agenda.
At the same time, China remains an important trade and investment partner, and it shares Pakistan’s threat assessment of India. Importantly, China supplies the vast majority of Pakistan’s military-technical equipment despite Pakistan’s status as a “Major Non-NATO Ally”, which the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported was a whopping 80% of its imports from 2021-2025. Pakistan would therefore be hard-pressed to reject any Chinese request to use its territory for sending MANPADS to Iran.
Its rapprochement with the US could be instantly shattered if it’s discovered that Pakistan played any role in China’s reported plans to help Iran kill American airmen, albeit in self-defense, especially if any are actually killed by these same MANPADS. Pakistan could also be punished with punitive tariffs from the US, which is its top export market, thus possibly worsening socio-economic trouble at home. Its traditional Sino-US balancing act would also collapse and likely see the US decisively pivot to India.
For these reasons, Pakistan would certainly be in a pickle if the report about China planning to send Iran MANPADS through its territory is true, since it would be forced to choose between its patrons. Given how close it’s grown to the US, however, Pakistan would likely reject any such request from China. Whether China would then punish Pakistan is unknown, but the US most definitely would if Pakistan assisted China in helping Iran kill American airmen, and Pakistan might come to deeply regret it.
