Amos Yadlin, a well-known intelligence figure and former head of the Israeli military intelligence service, said Tel Aviv was concerned about the Iran-China Comprehensive Cooperation Plan document.
Ex-IDF intel head: Iran-China megadeal includes ‘worrying’ military info-sharing
Amos Yadlin says China believes it can be more aggressive with Biden; full details of agreement not public, but draft reported last year calls for Beijing, Tehran to exchange intel.
Amos Yadlin, the former IDF chief of Military Intelligence, expressed concern on Monday about a reported clause in the 25-year strategic cooperation mega-deal signed by Iran and China that includes a commitment to military cooperation, with joint training, research, and intelligence sharing.
“One of the most worrying clauses in the agreement between Iran and China is the intelligence sharing,” the head of the Institute for National Security Studies told the Ynet news site.
The full details of the final agreement have not been released, but Yadlin said that with that clause, reported being in a draft last year, “China is putting itself in a place that, until today, it had not been before.
On a fundamental level, China opposes an Iranian nuclear bomb, but on the other hand, it is not helping to stop Iran,” said Yadlin. “Iran, too, needs the political support which China has to stop the United States from pressuring it.”
“The Chinese understand that the Biden administration is not the Trump administration, and they can be much more aggressive,” he added.
Institute for National Security Studies Chairman Amos Yadlin attends the Annual International Conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on January 23, 2017. (Tomer Neuberg/ FLASH90)
The clause is detailed in a former draft of the deal, obtained by the New York Times last year, and calls for joint training and exercises, as well as cooperation on research and weapons development, as well as the sharing of intelligence.
Yadlin’s comments came after China and Iran signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on Saturday, a 25-year long strategic agreement between the two countries to address economic issues in Iran amid crippling US sanctions.
China is Iran’s leading trade partner and was one of the biggest buyers of Iranian oil before then-US President Donald Trump reimposed sweeping unilateral sanctions in 2018 after abandoning a multilateral nuclear agreement with Tehran.
