Now Reading: China and Iran team up on rare earth exploration during war
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China and Iran team up on rare earth exploration during war
China's National Natural Science Foundation has added rare earth exploration to its joint workshops with Iran's science foundation, as reported by the South China Morning Post. Beijing typically guards rare earth technology…
The Story in Brief
China's National Natural Science Foundation has added rare earth exploration to its joint workshops with Iran's science foundation, as reported by the South China Morning Post. Beijing typically guards rare earth technology closely. China will contribute Rs 3.5 lakh per workshop; Iran will handle its participants' travel and Chinese researchers' accommodation in Iran. The collaboration comes while US-Iran hostilities persist. Rare earths are critical for weapons systems, and US stockpiles of long-range precision missiles have been nearly exhausted, per Reuters. China controls most global rare earth production and is tightening technology exports.
The Indian Opinion
The framing of this partnership as a wartime manoeuvre between US adversaries inflates what is essentially a modest science workshop. Rs 3.5 lakh from China's side, plus Iranian travel costs, does not buy technology transfer or industrial-scale extraction. Iran's rare earth capacity remains hypothetical, not operational. The real story is simpler: China's export controls are pushing it to prospect for new sources, and Iran's unexplored geology is cheap to survey. Watch how much actual processing capacity Iran builds in the next two years, not just anomalies on a map.
Source: timesnownews.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
