Council on Foreign Relations. International Assessment and Strategy Center > Research > China Sows The Whirlwind: Implications of Hezbollah’s Iranian-Chinese Weapons. Home Research Email this article Print this article by Richard Fisher, Jr. Israel has been surprised and dismayed in the last few weeks by the unexpectedly high quality of Hezbollah munitions, most notably rockets and missiles. Iran’s ability to produce thousands of shorter-range "Katyusha" size or slightly larger artillery-size rockets that its proxy Hezbollah has used to rain down on Israel since July 12, 2006 is largely owed to Russian and North Korean technology transfers, Chinese technologies are probably involved as well.
Without a doubt, however, the July 14 near-catastrophic attack against the modern and stealthy Israeli corvette Hanit would not have been possible without the C-802//Noor anti-ship missile, the means to produce which were sold by China to Iran in the mid-1990s. This highly capable anti-ship missile is probably only one of many systems, the transfers of which show how Beijing has opened a genuine Pandora’s Box of proliferation possibilities in the Middle East.
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