Are Russia and China helping Iran in its war with the United States? President Donald Trump was clear in his latest answer to a question that keeps resurfacing. "If they are, it’s at a very low level, but I don’t believe they are at all," Trump wrote on Truth Social late Monday.
"They have too much to lose, and we would know about it, and know about it very fast!" The trouble is the U.S. does already know about it. Trump’s own administration has been saying so for months—in sanctions notices, in Senate testimony, in warnings delivered to Beijing. But such help for Tehran is calibrated to be deniable.
Perhaps Moscow and Beijing have backed off under intensifying pressure from Washington, which has largely taken the form, publicly at least, of the threat of punishing economic sanctions. Trump has been in deal-making mode, too, when Chinese President Xi Jinping came to town in September and last week to secure Russian President Vladimir Putin’s diesel. Cutting aid for Tehran may have been on the table.
But the truth is Tehran could not have got this far into the conflict with the U.S. without assistance from both China and Russia, two pillars of the anti-Western bloc of which Iran is also a significant player. Here are five hard truths for Trump about how China and Russia have helped—and are still helping—Iran. Wars run on money, and Iran’s vital oil revenue has come overwhelmingly from China.
Chinese "teapot" refineries buy most of Iran’s crude, the Treasury Department said in April, providing "a vital source of revenue" to the regime and its armed forces. China took more than 80 percent of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025. This is according to Kpler data cited in a September investigation that described a barter-like channel turning Iranian crude into credits for Chinese goods.
Its sources estimated that $2 billion to $2.5 billion moved through the scheme’s payment vehicle in the past year. They claimed it was used at least once for air-defense contracts. Beijing denied the arrangement.
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