China rejects Reuters report on alleged arms sales to Iran

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday denied a Reuters report alleging that China sold weapons to Iran.

"China has made its position clear on relevant issues on multiple occasions. The report is not true and has no factual ground at all," a spokesperson for the ministry said. "China always works for peace and the end of the conflict." 

CGTN's Fact Hunter, a global verification platform, searched online mentions of the story, discovering thousands of reposts on social media platforms, including X, YouTube and Bluesky.

However, retracing the relevant posts in reverse chronological order shows that the entire narrative online was based on a Reuters report, which was the only source of this information. All the later reports of the story cited Reuters directly and provided no further evidence to corroborate the claim. No further verification on the claim was made by the subsequent reposts either. 

The original Reuters report itself, which was published on Wednesday as an "exclusive" story, relied entirely on unnamed sources and provided no details about their identity, background or credibility. No other news agency has independently obtained similar information.  

Reuters has not yet responded to CGTN's request for comment, and no further updates have been published by the news agency regarding the claim.

(Cover: Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning holds a press conference in Beijing, China, July 30, 2026. /VCG)