USA: According to some local analysts, the claim made by a senior US diplomat last week that militias supported by Iran are using Chinese drones to attack Beijing's major Gulf trading partners raises more questions than it does answers.

On Thursday, Barbara Leaf, the US's assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, accused China of doing nothing to stop the spread of its unmanned aerial vehicles throughout the region.

She referred to attacks launched against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since they intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015 to stop the country from being overrun by the Iran-allied Houthi rebel movement, saying, "I am the first to say that it is an irony that those UAVs that these [Iranian] proxies use are Chinese."

The Chinese state does not provide them, but it makes no effort to stop the flow.

This Week in Asia spoke with four of six analysts who specialise in Middle East conflicts involving Iran and its allies. They expressed surprise at Leaf's statement, in part because Washington did not reveal any new information prior to it regarding the flow of Chinese-made drones into the Middle East.

The Houthis used a lot of Chinese drones in the beginning. According to UN reports, many of the parts used in Iranian proxy drones are Chinese, and European parts have been tracked to China where they vanish before showing up in an Iranian drone on the battlefield, according to Dave DesRoches, a professor at the US National Defence University's Near East South Asia Centre for Strategic Studies in Washington.

Of course, nothing takes place in China without the government's approval, so I believe it's just a little bit of a word jumble, he said.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi acquired Chinese CH-4 and Wing Loong II drones after joining the Yemeni conflict and used them extensively against the Houthis.

The two biggest economies in the Middle East are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are also China's main trading and investment partners there.

Another analyst in Washington, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of their employer, described Leaf's assertion as "a little bit of a surprising allegation."

They claimed that Leaf is a "very serious diplomat" and that they "wouldn't make something like that up completely." "In other words, my suspicion is that such a claim has a serious basis."

According to a UN investigation into the two most significant drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oil processing facilities, both of which occurred in 2019, Iranian delta-wing UAVs launched from Iraq were in charge of leading the attacks.

Both the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen, which is allied with Tehran, and a shadowy Iraqi militia group widely believed to be a front for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps both claimed responsibility for the attacks.

According to the UN report, the Chinese ASN-301 drone, which is based on Israel's Harpy anti-radar UAV, and the Iranian delta-wing drone are strikingly similar.

Analysts said that Leaf's comments only made sense if the nuances of the Middle Eastern drone trade were taken into account in the absence of new evidence to back up her allegation.

Another reputable Washington analyst stated that Leaf is "probably right".

There is however more to it. Iranians are undoubtedly purchasing Chinese drones and undoubtedly building their own as well. According to the analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, "which are being used for what purposes and transferred to whom, isn't always clear but it's largely irrelevant in terms of impact.

The analysts claimed that while all the models it produces use primarily Chinese microelectronics, some Iranian-made drones supplied to the Tehran-allied militias in Yemen and Iraq were known to be based on Chinese designs.

How far back and how far down the line do you differentiate, then? the analyst in Washington said.

The 2019 UN report claims that the Houthi movement in Yemen purchased drone parts from Belarus, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Iran, and Japan through middlemen.

According to the report, middlemen delivering drone parts to Yemen have been discovered in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Athens, Tehran, Muscat, and even Abu Dhabi, which was repeatedly attacked by drones at the beginning of this year.

According to the report, parts were smuggled across the Omani border by Hong Kong companies who flew them to Yemen via Muscat and Bangkok.

As Chinese-made drones are frequently purchased from Amazon and modified with cameras and explosives devices, a Yemeni analyst said they "wouldn't be surprised" if some of the drones used against Saudi Arabia are Chinese-made.

The CEO of Gulf States Analytics, a risk consultancy with headquarters in Washington, Giorgio Cafiero, stated that Leaf's remarks "need to be understood within the context of Team Biden trying to persuade US-friendly Arab states that it will not serve their security interests" to have Beijing and Moscow fill the void left by Washington's recently reduced military role in the Middle East.

He added that the White House is "pursuing efforts to push back against Chinese and Russian influence in the Gulf," noting that the Biden administration's foreign policy in the Middle East is "significantly focused on great power competition in the region."

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