• Beijing rejects claims of SMIC supplying chip tools to Iran.
• Wang Yi urges peace talks amid Iran conflict tensions.
• US officials say shipments began year ago and may still be ongoing.
  

China’s foreign ministry accused the media of publishing “false information” on Friday following a report that said the country’s top semiconductor firm has sent chipmaking tools to Iran.

The report, which cited information from two unidentified senior officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, said contract chipmaker SMIC “began sending the tools to Iran roughly a year ago”.

A US official was quoted in the report as saying they had “no reason to believe that any of this has stopped”.

China is a key partner of Iran but has not announced military assistance to Tehran in the war triggered by US-Israeli strikes on February 28, repeatedly calling for a ceasefire.

The chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), did not respond to an AFP request for comment on Friday.

Asked about the report at a regular news conference in Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said he was “not familiar with the situation”.

“What I can tell you is that recently, some media have been keen on releasing some news that seems right but instead is wrong,” Lin said.

He added that, “after verification”, such reports were “all” found to be “false information” but did not elaborate.

China condemned the US-Israeli killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khameini but has also said it “does not go along” with Tehran’s strikes on Gulf states hosting US bases.

Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in a phone call this week that he hoped “all parties can seize every opportunity and window for peace and start the peace talks process”.

The Iranian foreign minister has called on the United Nations to condemn the US and the Israeli regime for waging an illegal war on the Islamic Republic and hold the regimes accountable for their crimes.

Abbas Araghchi made the remarks in a phone conversation on Thursday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as the sides discussed the latest developments and the atrocities that the invading coalition is committing against Iran.

Araghchi urged the UN to take serious action and adopt decisive and clear positions towards honoring its inherent duty to protect international peace and security by denouncing the aggressors and bringing them to account.

Referring to the brutal US-Israeli attacks on civilian sites, including schools, hospitals, cultural and historical monuments, public places and residential areas, the top Iranian diplomat reminded the UN of its responsibility to pursue the flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international law, including human rights law and international humanitarian law.

He further criticized those who are calling for Tehran to show restraint or end the war.

“The fact should not be ignored that it was the United States and the Zionist regime, which launched the military aggression against Iran and imposed the war on the region and the world, betraying diplomacy once again and endangering security and interests of all regional countries,” he said.

The criminal US-Israeli aggression on Iran began on February 28 with airstrikes that assassinated senior Iranian officials and commanders.

The Iranian armed forces have responded by launching almost daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israelioccupied territories as well as US military bases and assets across the region.

They have also blocked the Strait of Hormuz to oil and gas tankers affiliated with the adversaries and those cooperating with them.

Araghchi said that insecurity in the strategic waterway, lying between the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, is the direct result of the American-Zionist aggression against Iran.

“Transit prohibition for vessels belonging or linked to the enemies and their allies is the legal right of Iran as a coastal country. Related authorities of the Islamic Republic have taken necessary measures to provide maritime security and safety in the waterway.”

He also emphasized Iran’s resolve to continue the legitimate defense of its national security and sovereignty, as well as territorial integrity.

Guterres, for his part, stressed the UN’s principled position on the need for respecting countries’ national sovereignty and territorial integrity, expressing concerns about the continuation of the war and killings in the region.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced the execution of wave 83 of Operation True Promise 4 in the early hours of Friday, targeting key American and Israeli military installations across the region with missiles and drones.

According to a statement from the IRGC’s Public Relations, the operation was dedicated to the “warm-hearted people of the southern strip of the country in the north of the ever-Persian Gulf” and was conducted under the blessed code “Ya Aba Abdullah Al-Hussein (AS).”

The strikes targeted a range of strategic assets belonging to American and Zionist forces.

Among the targets were storage tanks and the oil depot in Ashdod, a military personnel site in the Modi’in settlement, and a US military information exchange center in the region.

The IRGC also struck American military bases at Al-Dhafra and Al-Udeiri, along with maintenance and storage hangars for transport aircraft and drones at Ali Al-Salem Air Base.

Additional targets include fuel tanks for jets and fighter aircraft of American forces, as well as the maintenance and repair hangar for the Patriot missile system at Sheikh Isa Base.

The IRGC statement noted that the operation employed a combination of advanced weaponry, including long-range and medium-range systems, solid and liquid fuel missiles, precision-strike and multi-warhead capabilities, as well as suicide and loitering drones.

It further emphasized that the retaliatory attacks were carried out with “full success by the grace of God.”

In its statement, the IRGC highlighted the impact of ongoing operations on daily life for Israeli settlers, noting that “siren-to-siren living and prolonged confinement in shelters have become a daily routine for the Zionists.”

The IRGC concluded with a stark warning: “As we said, we will find you, and with God’s will, we will make you pay for your despicable deeds.”

Iranian armed forces have so far carried out 83 waves of missile and drone strikes with advanced weaponry targeting Israeli military facilities in the occupied territories, as well as US occupation bases and assets scattered across the West Asia region.

The retaliatory operations were launched immediately after the US-Israeli coalition carried out an unprovoked act of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran on February 28, leading to the martyrdom of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, some top-ranking military commanders, and over 170 schoolchildren in Minab.

The Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq have also joined the front against the external aggressors, inflicting heavy blows on the enemy.

The retaliatory operations by the Iranian armed forces, as well as the resistance groups, have inflicted heavy blows on the enemy, decimating its military and strategic infrastructure.

Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi, the spokesperson for the armed forces, in remarks on Thursday, said that US personnel are now forced to abandon military bases and take refuge in civilian hotels, a move that he condemned as an attempt by the US to use civilian structures for military cover.

“The Americans, who once relied on their military bases to establish a presence, are now hiding in hotels and relying on the civilian areas of our region as a protective shield,” Shekarchi said.

“This marks a humiliating retreat and an admission of their inability to defend themselves.”

The Iranian Army also continues to inflict severe blows on the enemy. It targeted sensitive locations in the strategic Haifa port on Thursday with a barrage of drones.

“The center for manufacturing and maintenance of various military vessels of the Zionist regime in the eastern Mediterranean Sea that played a key and sensitive role in logistics for the regime’s Navy as well as the huge fuel storage facilities for warplanes in Haifa port were, among others, targeted in the recent drone attack by the Islamic Republic’s Armed forces,” it said in a statement.