Analysts ‘surprised’ by US diplomat’s claim of Chinese drones used in attacks on Gulf nations
- Analysts say US diplomat Barbara Leaf’s claim is not backed by fresh data about flow of Chinese-made drones into the Middle East
- Her allegation against China only makes sense if the nuances of the Middle East drone trade and US foreign policy in the region are taken into account, they observe
A top US diplomat’s claim last week that Iran-backed militias are using Chinese drones to attack Beijing’s top economic partners in the Gulf raises more questions than answers, some regional analysts say.
US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Barbara Leaf on Thursday accused China of failing to prevent the proliferation of its unmanned aerial vehicles across the region.
“It is an irony, I am the first to say, that those UAVs that these [Iranian] proxies use are Chinese,” she said, referring to attacks mounted on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since they intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to prevent the country from being overrun by the Iran-allied Houthi rebel movement.
“They are not provided by the [Chinese] state, but the state doesn’t attempt to curtail that flow.”
Four of six analysts focused on Middle East conflicts involving Iran and its proxies spoke to This Week in Asia and expressed surprise at Leaf’s statement, in part because it was not preceded by the disclosure by Washington of any fresh information about the flow of Chinese-made drones into the Middle East.
