Miles Johnson

Until now, no one knew that it was actually under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

So this is a satellite that was launched from China by a Chinese company in 2024.

And a couple of months later,

it was transferred over to be under the control of the IRGC, specifically the Aerospace Force, part of the IRGC, which is extremely influential in everything from its sort of military to economy and extremely important in the war with the United States and Israel at the moment.

And it is responsible for ballistic missiles and drones.

And this satellite we've shown in our reporting was being used to surveil sort of the biggest and most important U.S.

military bases in the Middle East.

Our reporting found some pretty interesting stuff about the timing of this satellite being tasked to surveil particular important US military installations in the Middle East, and then the timing around attacks on those bases, either with drones or missiles.

And so in one instance, around the middle of March, we saw this satellite being

taking a lot of imagery of the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

And around exactly the same time, that was when there were multiple reported attacks on that base.

And so it really does appear that this quite detailed satellite compared to what we believed Iran had as its capability was being used for some pretty important strikes on American assets in the region.

I think although this satellite was being tasked by the IRGC, it is going to be quite a controversial thing for a Chinese-made launch satellite to be used in this way.

Because obviously, China is the biggest trading partner of the Gulf countries.

And also China gets most of its oil from the Gulf countries.

And it was sort of largely assumed that there was some sort of assistance occurring.

But the fact that it was this satellite and the fact that the satellite has been secretly being used since 2024, I think is quite a significant thing.

And I think it really does change our understanding of how

Firstly, Iran has attempted to diversify its so-called space assets, where over the past year or so in the conflicts it's had with Israel and the United States, its assets inside Iran relating to satellites have largely been destroyed.

But if Iran is using Chinese ground stations, which are dispersed around the world in places like in Latin America and Africa,