Iran Allegedly Using Chinese Satellite Images, Surprising U.S. Space Force
The Financial Times alleges that a Chinese firm sold a remote sensing satellite to Iran in 2024, now used to image targets across the Middle East.
Almost seven weeks ago, the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran to start another Middle Eastern war, coming after earlier joint efforts in June 2025. Two weeks into the conflict, the U.S. declared that it had achieved ‘space superiority’, taking out Iran’s domestic orbiting assets and capabilities to support them. However, that hasn’t stopped Iran from obtaining information from space.
According to a report from the Financial Times on April 15th, China-based Earth Eye Co (沐美星空), full business name Beijing Mumei Starry Sky Technology Co Ltd (北京沐美星空科技有限公司), reached an agreement with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force to use a satellite and ground stations owned by Emposat (航天驭星), a Chinese satellite tracking, telemetry, and control company. Both enterprises operate within China’s commercial space sector.
The satellite used by the Guard Corps is claimed to be TEE-01B (地球之眼1号卫星), a 112-kilogram remote sensing satellite with a resolution of 52 centimeters in panchromatic mode or 208 centimeters in multispectral mode per pixel in a 14.8-kilometer swath image, launched in June 2024 by Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1. Access to TEE-01B was said to have come via an on-orbit delivery agreement, a service the company does offer to hand over a satellite once its systems a verfied to be healthy.
The total paid by the Guard Corps to Earth Eye Co as part of the agreement to use TEE-01B and Emposat ground stations was stated to be around 250 million Yuan (36.66 million United States Dollars, as of April 15th), an impressive bounty for just one tiny spacecraft. That deal was closed in September 2024, almost eighteen months before the current conflight began.
As for what TEE-01B is up to for its Iranian operators, the Financial Times stated it has been imaging military sites across the Middle East that house or support U.S. and Israeli forces, per leaked information obtained by the outlet, as well as industrial infrastructure. Those images are then used to analyze struck locations with before and after photographs.
As for why the Guard Corps would obtain a Chinese-made satellite that communicates through non-Iranian ground stations, a former CIA analyst told the outlet:
“Iran’s satellite ground stations, which were hit in 2025 and 2026, can be hit very easily by missiles from a thousand miles away. You can’t just hit a Chinese ground station located in another country.”
That is in addition to more direct support from Russian forces.
What the Financial Times missed in its reporting is that TEE-01B was produced by Changguang Satellite Technology Co Ltd (长光卫星技术股份有限公司), of the Jilin-1 (吉林一号) Earth imaging constellation, for Earth Eye Co to do what they wanted with it. Changguang Satellite Technology themselves have already come under fire from the U.S., having been sanctioned in 2023 for allegedly selling imagery to Russia’s Wagner Group and then to Yemen’s Houthis in 2025.
Following the Financial Times’ piece, Reuters reported that China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (中华人民共和国外交部) and embassy in Washington D.C. denied any state links to the claimed activity.
Since this latest conflict in the Middle East began, U.S. Earth imaging firms like Planet Labs and Vantor (formerly Maxar) have indefinitely halted their publishing of imagery of the region due to pressures from the American government, likely to hide the extent of damage from retaliatory strikes. That pressure did not stop intelligence firms, like those of the Shanghai-based MizarVision (觅熵), from buying imagery from other Western entities and then publishing that imagery. Meanwhile STAR.VISION Aerospace (地卫二空间技术) utilized the halt in imagery to make its regular Middle Eastern imagery free to subscribers of its services.
Iran’s use of imagery from Earth Eye Co and others has surprised the U.S. Space Force, making the American military at large adjust how it operates now knowing that they can be seen anytime and anywhere. As quoted by Defense One, Head of U.S. Space Command General Stephen Whiting told press at Colorado’s Space Symposium conference:
“Every country, just about today, can somehow access space imagery, which then gives them an insight on what’s going on in the battlefield … We have to recognize that the rest of the world can now see the entire planet transparently and almost 24/7.”
General Whiting’s comments come almost two months after Lieutenant General Gregory Gagnon, head of the U.S. Space Force’s Combat Forces Command, outlined that America is looking into attacking Chinese spacecraft, specifically citing a so-called threat from remote sensing satellites.