Kerri Bitsoff

A deflection again. Shall I paste my same reply to Esfandyar here too? From the guy whose hot takes were: shadow banking sanctions are pointless, and why stop ongoing procurement networks when Iran still has drones and missiles? Obvious why you're deflecting instead of engaging on substance.

@kerri_bitsoff @miadmaleki

Dismissing analysis you don't like as AI slop is just the 2026 version of a tired ad hominem. Technical analysis isn't for everyone, but for those who want to read and actually learn something, nobody understands this better. @miadmaleki was closer to this issue than almost anyone in the US government for years, which is exactly why he knows what these accounts are and can give the real context. FWIW, I was reading his analysis (just like this) for years before ChatGPT existed :)

Great to see @USTreasury hitting these important targets — the policy follow-through to April's China/Iran MANPADS story. home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel… In case you forgot: April 3: Iran shoots down a US F-15E with a shoulder-fired missile April 11: CNN/NYT report US intel showing China prepping more MANPADS shipments to Iran, routed through third countries to conceal origin. May 8: OFAC sanctions the people running the pipeline. Media coverage seems to have lost the plot a little — pretty sure you can't shoot a tanker out of the sky. Not sure @BrettErickson28 had read the press release, or has the USG background to interpret one, when he told Reuters this was about Hormuz. reuters.com/world/china/us… Can't wait to see more of this from OFAC.

Russian-made Shaheds are dropping out of the sky. Improved Ukrainian air defenses, a degraded supply chain, and Western sanctions all play a role, but so does Moscow's choice to swap quality for quantity, a desperate move to overwhelm Ukraine in a war it's losing. That's the tradeoff sanctions are designed to force. As I told @WSJ: "You have to do the cost analysis. Would I rather have 100 drones that can fly for two hours, than 50 that can go for 20?" Sanctions made volume and quality mutually exclusive. Excellent reporting from @joshchin and @austinramzy: wsj.com/world/china-is…

Looks like @miadmaleki called it.

None of this should come as a surprise. For years, Chinese companies have openly supplied Iran's missile program through public-facing websites, Farsi landing pages, and WhatsApp numbers to make it easy. They sell ammonium perchlorate, propellant precursors, and full Shahed drone parts, and they market directly to Iranian buyers. The only thing new here is that the TOUSKA got caught. Pic 1: Guidechem, a Chinese chemical marketplace, with an Iranian buyer in late 2025 openly requesting 40 tons of TEPA (dual-use polyamine used in solid rocket propellant production). Pic 2: TNJ Chemical, selling bulk ammonium perchlorate (the primary oxidizer in ballistic missile fuel), has a long history of attending trade shows in Tehran. Pic 3: A live Chinese site (militarydrones.org.cn) openly selling Shahed drone parts (fuselage, MD550 engine, servo motors, GNSS anti-jam receivers, launchers) with a WhatsApp number as the sole method for purchases and coordination. Pic 4: Theorem Chemical, a Chinese manufacturer selling bulk military grade ammonium perchlorate in industrial drums, with a recently removed Farsi landing page.

1/10 The U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would cost Iran approximately $276M/day in lost exports and disrupt $159M/day in imports, a combined economic damage of ~$435M/day, or $13B/month. Over 90% of Iran's $109.7B in annual trade transits the Persian Gulf. Oil/gas accounts for 80% of government export earnings and 23.7% of GDP. Kharg Island alone generates ~$53B/year, or as I noted to @TIME, "$78 billion a year in energy revenue.

@quak71434 same reasons: cost, access, taxing on military assets, disruption of civilian commerce (humanitarian crisis), political appetite, and availability of other tools

@kerri_bitsoff But the IRISL ships themselves are illegal. So why dont the US seize the complete fleet?

Because these shipments are wrapped in legitimate civilian commerce. IRISL ships carry thousands of containers of normal cargo and shipping logs don't surface until after the fact. The parts themselves are small, commercially available electronics that look identical to what goes into washing machines or car navigation systems. Hitting cranes or seizing ships means disrupting an entire civilian port and commercial traffic — massive escalation. We have other tools. Interdictions help but they're tactical — you catch one shipment, the next one reroutes. Sanctions and export controls are the systemic answer, and frankly @USTreasury and BIS should be surging designations on the logistics layer right now. The shippers, freight forwarders, and port agents facilitating these loads. But ultimately this falls on Western manufacturers and their distributors. If your parts are ending up in Iranian drones, that's not just a government enforcement problem. That's a corporate responsibility to know your supply chain.

Both, but primarily sea. IRISL (Iran's sanctioned state shipping line) runs a constant shuttle between Chinese ports and Bandar Abbas. Components, CNC machines, and rocket fuel precursors get loaded into standard containers alongside normal commercial cargo. In fact, the same Hong Kong front companies that procure the parts show up on IRISL shipping logs as consignors. IRISL falsifies documents, uses generic cargo descriptions, and rotates vessel names. U.S. special forces interdicted one shipment off Sri Lanka in late 2025, but most get through. Smaller electronics move by air through UAE, Turkey, Malaysia, and others.

@kerri_bitsoff @miadmaleki Is it moved by rail or ship?

Iran built its missile program with these networks. IRISL still moving sodium perchlorate from China, enough to make ~260 missiles based on Feb shipment. @miadmaleki says this is how Tehran restocks. The strikes set them back. USG and Gulf states must act. telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

China has an overwhelming supply to parts to support Iran's rebuilding. If you read the Jamestown piece and the full thread, you will see that these are produced at such a massive scale that they are sent around the world - from the US to Iran -at a rate we can't keep up with. Not talking about full drones/missiles. Talking about the parts that build them.

@kerri_bitsoff I am all for going after supply chains! But the collective procurement base of ‘missiles and drones intended to be used against the US’ is drastically reduced. That China has some (surely not much given RU issues) excess capacity to offset Iran doesn’t change the scale

Every time the U.S. degrades Iranian weapons capacity, China's dual-use pipeline surges to reconstitute it. While we sit in a ceasefire, Iran is reconstituting. It has burned through 4,000+ drones and 1,800+ missiles in five weeks. Its production facilities are cratered. It is desperate to rebuild, and the same Chinese micro-enterprise network that kept Shaheds flying into Kyiv is working overtime to make that happen. 🧵

@JakeKAllDay Not a comment on the ceasefire. It's a comment on what's happening underneath it. These procurement networks are reconstituting right now. If we're not using this window to go after the supply chains, we're giving Iran the time to rebuild everything we just destroyed.

@kerri_bitsoff Sure but this argument works in reverse. A 2 week “ceasefire” (or in reality lower intensity) is more time for GCC to stand up drone defenses from UA. Iran reduced to a client state vs a weapons exporter to their client orgs is not a good development for them.

We know the pattern. We know the companies. We know the part numbers. Manufacturers should be auditing their downstream distribution chains right now. A Shenzhen firm with $14,500 in registered capital and a business license for selling e-cigarettes exported thousands of aerospace components to Iranian drone manufacturers. Others were created days before placing orders, with no websites, no operating history, and no paper trail. This is a systematic failure to pay attention to where critical parts for weapons go. Western manufacturers, distributors, and governments have allowed it to persist for years, and it's now killing people in Dubai, Kuwait, and Haifa.

@USTreasury designated new players after taking down Iran's PKGB network (Dingtai, Yonghongan, Tianle, Shenzhen Zhiyu), but two have already re-registered at new Hong Kong addresses. OFAC has gone silent for two weeks (an unprecedented pause on actions) with ZERO Iran procurement actions during five weeks of active war. All while Chinese fronts are reconstituting and diverting these parts.

#اصفهان ویدیوی دریافتی با شرح: دوباره یه زاغه مهماتی چیزی زدند طرف ۱۵ خرداد #بهارستان اصفهان. داره هی منفجر میشه از ساعت ۵:۱۰' جمعه ۱۴ فروردین #Iran