As an ordinary person, I certainly hope that Chinese weapons can play a role there. However, China's long-standing foreign policy is difficult to change, and Western media often resort to such tricks precisely because they understand the stability of China's long-term policies.
China sold weapons to both Iraq and Iran during the war, China supplied weapons to Afghanistan while they were fighting the USSR.
China’s current stance against supplying weapons to active combatants is one of convenience and calculation, not absolute principle.
And China pushing Iran to enter into the ceasefire and negotiations with America serves multiple objectives, one of which is it helps with Chinese domestic political considerations and sensitivities.
Beijing would prefer not to appear to be actively profiteering off of conflicts by fanning the flames of war with arms sales, nor does it want to appear to be splashing the hard earned tax money of Chinese citizens paying for foreign wars and playing empire. However, with China’s own recent history, helping those countries and peoples who are being ravaged by foreign aggressors who are showing no mercy and are giving peace no real chance would not be a hard sale at all to get the Chinese public’s consent and support for providing arms to Iran while also creating clear daylight between USIS actions in Iran and Russia’s moves in Ukraine to avoid parallels being drawn.
That is not to say China will provide Iran with arms, merely pointing out that Beijing is actively working to facilitate that should the decision be taken to pull the trigger on it.
I think this is a striking characteristic of Chinese strategic planning, that they always work on developing as many plans and options as possible, so that their decision makers are never cornered into having to choose between bad and worse options. The priority is to keep as many options alive and viable as possible so that the optimal course could be charted to avoid having to needlessly make hard choices. I think this is an aspect of Chinese strategic thinking that many commentators and analysts both Chinese and western fail to appreciate, that China can have a multi-decade grand plan, but also have the agility to rapidly pivot that plan to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and/or avoid unforeseen pitfalls.
China’s grand strategy is to avoid needless entanglements in the domestic affairs and petty wars of others to not needlessly sap Chinese strength and treasure. However, Iran has demonstrated a rear combination of courage, determination, combat capabilities and pragmatism that is rapidly winning over Beijing. So I would rate the chances of China providing arms to Iran as very high.
I think the key concerns China has left would be how to map out a clear and decisive off-ramp to end the war, and how to manage America’s defeat in such a way as to avoid them using nukes.
Both of those objectives are inextricably linked to what kind of power and diplomatic structure will emerge and be sustained after the war. For both, the key is Saudi Arabia. China needs to be able to help Iran craft a post-conflict geopolitical landscape that is acceptable to the Saudis. Because while the likes of Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE can be easily subjugated or conquered, a full on war between Iran and Saudi Arabia will be far more damaging and long lasting, which would be unacceptable to China from a political and economic standpoint, as well as from a nuclear escalation risks POV.
I think the need to manage America’s defeat will also limit the kind of weapons China would be prepared to supply to Iran. AShBMs would be very decisive, but Iran wiping out USN carriers and amphibious assault groups with them carries a huge risk that Trump would retaliate with nuclear strikes.
As such, I think the weapons China is most likely to supply Iran will be mainly defensive in nature. I would expect decoys to be a top item, as well as passive thermals, GPS jammers, anti stealth systems as well as potentially CIWS and micro missiles for defence against F35s and stealthy cruise missiles and SDBs. Heavy lift drones could also be supplied as a contingency in case America really is stupid enough to try an amphibious assault against Iranian islands. Those drones would ostensively be provided for logistical purposes, but if the Iranians wanted to strap as much explosives as they could carry and kamikaze them into American amphibious ships and marines on those islands, well not much China can do to stop that is there?
