Missile fuel from China ‘caused Iran port explosion'
At least 40 people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in the blast in Shahid Rajaei port on Saturday, which the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said was likely triggered by containers of chemicals.
The agency did not specify which chemicals they were but it was reported in January that China was to ship sodium perchlorate, a common missile fuel component, to Iran after its supplies ran low following attacks on Israel.
In February, a ship called the Golbon was reported to have arrived in Iran from China carrying 1,000 tons of ammonium perchlorate, another substance commonly used to make solid rocket fuel.
CNN said the vessel was operated by the Iranian Islamic Republic of Shipping Lines and that Tehran's Sufficiency Jihad Organisation, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, had purchased the chemical.
The Maritime Executive, a leading shipping journal, later confirmed the arrival in Iran of the MV Jairan, another ship carrying missile fuel ingredients from China.
It reported that Iranian authorities appeared to have taken no measures to hide its movements and that it had left Shanghai with its tracking system switched on.
The combined cargos of the MV Jairan and the Golbon 'would be sufficient to fuel approximately 250 medium range Khybar-Shikan and Fattah missiles, or shorter range Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar missiles, or their Houthi equivalents', the journal wrote.
Iran has denied there were any missile fuel ingredients at the port in Bandar Abbas, 1,000km (621 miles) south of Tehran, at the time of the explosion.
Brig Gen Reza Talaei-Nik told state media on Sunday: 'There were no imported or exported shipments related to military use or rocket fuel at the site of the incident.'
Saturday's explosion came just hours after Iran and the United States met in Oman for the third round of negotiations over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program.
The US and Iran will continue talks next week in Europe. However, Iran remains sceptical about the outcome.
'Some of our differences are very serious,' Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, told Tehran's state television. 'But can we reach an agreement? I am hopeful but very cautious.'
While Iran maintains its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned last week that Iran had enough enriched uranium to produce several nuclear warheads.
Foreign conspiracy
Some Iranian media suggested on Sunday that the blast was a foreign conspiracy.
An editorial in Ham-Mihan read: 'It is improbable that the explosion's concurrence with the start of technical talks between Iran and America is coincidental.'
Suggesting Israel could have been behind the blast, it noted that Iran has thousands of people with 'sensitive access' that the Jewish state could potentially recruit as saboteurs.
However, Israeli security sources told The Telegraph that the incident was simply an echo of the Beirut Port tragedy in 2020, in which over 200 people were killed by a major explosion.
Lebanese authorities said the blast was triggered by a fire in a warehouse where a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate fertiliser – commonly used for ammunition and explosives – had been negligently stored for years.
Israeli intelligence analyst Ronen Solomon told The Telegraph that video footage analysis of Saturday's blast in Iran was 'very similar to the storage accident we saw at the port of Beirut'.
The analysis shows there are 'increasing signs that a chain reaction due to an unsafe discharge caused the ignition and explosion of a shipment of chemicals consistent with sodium perchlorate or ammonium nitrate in units of 25 tons each', he said.
Iran has long sourced missile fuel ingredients from its allies. In 2023, Politico Europe revealed Iranian negotiations with Russia and China to purchase ammonium perchlorate, a powerful oxidiser used in solid rocket propellants.
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Foreign currencies, such as dollars and dirhams, are vanishingly scarce and therefore exceedingly precious. Anything that eases this hard-currency constraint is worth lavishing with vast domestic resources. The veggie-melon hegemon Neither Iran nor the UAE release up-to-date, detailed trade figures. But we managed to gather private data, based on customs reports from third countries, which provide a fresh and comprehensive picture. Although the source wishes to remain anonymous, The Economist has cross-checked its figures with partial statistics released by the United Nations and other official bodies. The numbers suggest Iran's strategy is proving wildly successful. It already dominates the market for 15 commodities in the UAE, from aubergines to melons. The story is similar, on a smaller scale, in Oman and Qatar. Volumes are soaring; quality is improving, too. Once limited to basic tomatoes on the vine, Iran now excels at the cherry variety, the trickiest kind. Sources say it is building strawberry farms which could crush the competition in two to three years. To understand how Iran's produce gets to market, start at the farm gate. Unlike oil, which is pumped by a state-owned monopoly, the country's veggies are produced by 36,000 small growers. That output is bundled and stacked onto trailers, which are towed to Bandar Lengeh in the south of Iran. It is then loaded at dawn onto smallish ships, which ferry it to Sharjah, in the UAE's north. The journey takes only six hours. Transporting a container of fruit from Iran's farms to Emirati warehouses costs just 8,000 dirhams ($2,200). Shipping fruit from Egypt or Turkey costs four times as much. KUWAIT IRAN Dayyer The Gulf Bandar Abbas Bandar Lengeh Other possible sea routes Sirik BAHRAIN Jask QATAR Sharjah Riyadh Abu Dhabi Al‑Qifiri'ah Gulf of Oman UAE Ibri SAUDI ARABIA Muscat OMAN 200km Possible routes to market 1 Departs from Bandar Lengeh port, Iran 2 Shipped to Sharjah port in UAE 3 By road to Al Aweer food market 4 By road to Al Aziziyah or Halaga food markets in Saudi Arabia. Or 5 By road to Silal central market in Oman 6 On to Ibri in Oman 7 Along the Oman-Saudi Desert Highway to Al Qifiri'ah in Saudi Arabia, and then on to food markets. Most of the Iranian produce coming into Sharjah is registered at customs. But then it has to be paid for. Doing so openly is hard, because Emirati banks are reluctant to process transactions involving Iran. The trade therefore relies on an informal payment system called hundi. It is run by tiny entities with offices across Dubai, which often feature 'transportation', 'goods' and 'services' in their company names. In the UAE, their agents collect dirhams from food importers, which they pass on to exporters of appliances, auto parts and machinery that Iran desperately needs. These goods are then shipped across the Gulf to Iran. Foodstuffs, priced in Iranian rials, flow one way. Vital manufactured goods, priced in dirhams or dollars, flow in the opposite direction. But dirhams need never be exchanged for rials. From Sharjah, local lorries pull the trailers to Al Aweer—which is where the real magic happens. The Gulf-wide trade in Iranian produce is run by the market's wholesalers, according to interviews with direct witnesses. It is they who place orders with Iranian traders, find buyers in the UAE and beyond, and orchestrate logistics. They also feed intelligence back to Iran on the evolution of consumer demand, say two market participants. Emirati merchants are behind Iran's novel push into strawberries, for example. Wholesalers rarely import from Iran directly, preferring to source the goods via one or more intermediaries. That affords some deniability. In a message seen by The Economist, an executive at one such firm makes oblique references to his Iranian offerings, boasting about the big volumes he is able to secure. Most wholesalers of Iranian goods also hide their origin by mixing them with groceries from elsewhere. Camouflaging teams sometimes occupy a warehouse's entire floor. One classic trick is to keep legitimate produce on the top layer of a box while swapping the rest for cheaper fruit. Sometimes the Iranian food is repackaged in fake versions of boxes from reputable brands, in the hope of deterring inspections. These tactics shield wholesalers from unwanted scrutiny. Hiding Iranian fruit also helps them make a lot more money. On the day we visited one trader in Al Aweer, he had a container of cut-price Iranian broccoli just outside his office. In 2024, he said, an Iranian exporter offered him ten containers a day of tomatoes—equivalent to 200 tonnes—at the cost of 1 dirham per kg (including transport). Farmers in the UAE must typically charge 2 dirhams per kg to break even; Dutch supplies cost at least five times that. By pretending they are selling full boxes of this pricier fruit, without any cheap Iranian varieties in the mix, wholesalers inflate their margins. The same goes for the supermarkets that buy their produce. Purchasing officers who turn a blind eye to the fraud often get a kickback from the wholesaler. It is not rare for managers of fruit-and-vegetable sections to do some blending themselves, too. They might mix Iranian tomatoes with Dutch varieties to make a bigger display. 'Instead of 4-5 dirhams, they sell the lot for 20-25 dirhams' per kg, says an insider. There is a lot of money to be made. One local supermarket chain is known for flying its staff in business class and lodging them in five-star hotels. Other UAE supermarkets, which include the local franchises of European giants like Carrefour and Waitrose, try harder to root out the deception. That explains why many retailers replace their grocery chiefs nearly every year. Rootless veggies and undercover kiwis The UAE is also a base for shady re-exports. One insider reckons a third of the country's imports of Iranian veggies end up in other countries. Much of this produce is smuggled. Saudi Arabia, for example, has long blocked fruit imports from Iran, a regional rival subject to Western sanctions that are tricky to navigate. The kingdom's customs officers will reject an entire shipment if they find a lone box with Farsi writing or even Persian numbers. Its enforcers also require sanitary certificates for incoming cargo that specify where it is from. Yet fooling them is easy, says an Emirati trader who does it a lot. 'We just put a sticker on the carton with a new origin: Azerbaijan, Turkey—anything but Iran.' To launder Iranian produce, traders also re-use paperwork issued for legitimate shipments: Italian kiwis and Spanish broccoli are frequent covers. This kind of fruit impersonation annoys bona fide exporters. Diplomats from various European countries have complained about it, to no avail. The crushing dominance of Iranian produce, facilitated by local firms, also makes a mockery of government plans to revive homegrown agriculture. In its national economic strategy, the UAE aims to top the Global Food Security Index—a benchmark by Economist Impact, our sister company—by 2051. Dubai is building a two-square-km 'Food Tech Valley'. Abu Dhabi is planning the world's largest indoor farm, to grow 10,000 tonnes of greens a year. Sharjah is sowing 1,400 hectares with wheat. Such flashy ventures, backed by a who's who of state funds and Western investors, are all meant to advance one goal: 'enhancing local food production'. In reality, local farms are withering. The UAE counts 35,000 estates, some of them large. One vegetable grower in Al Ain, the country's farming hub, employs nearly 400 staff to cultivate an area equivalent to 100 football pitches. He says his production of tomatoes has plummeted because a glut in overall supply has dragged prices down. The government's laissez-faire approach, he says, is 'destroying local farmers'. Emirati officials are aware of the problem. Their trade analysts have access to up-to-date data, says someone familiar with the country's government. Last year the economy ministry launched an anti-dumping investigation into mushrooms exported from Iran, according to a poster seen by The Economist. But the trade continues apace. Adding a layer of intrigue, some of Al Aweer's biggest wholesalers are controlled by people in power. Silal, an outfit founded to bolster food security during the covid-19 pandemic, belongs to ADQ, one of Abu Dhabi's sovereign-wealth funds. NRTC, a 50-year-old trader with 1,000 staff, is 41% owned by IHC, a conglomerate run by an Emirati royal. Why would the UAE—and other Gulf countries—tolerate Iran's green invasion? Perhaps they hope cheap imports will keep inflation down. They may also think that appeasing Iran will reduce the chances it lashes out against them if Israel strikes again. Some even posit that some Gulf leaders are ready to sacrifice local farming to help save scarce groundwater in a notoriously dry part of the world. Whatever the reason, relying on Iran is hardly a safe choice. Should it be bombed again, trade may dwindle. More frequent droughts are making its output increasingly volatile anyway, exposing importers to price shocks. However tempting, bingeing on Iranian produce looks like a recipe for trouble. Illustration:More from
