Unnamed U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that Tehran had acquired high-resolution satellite images of the Muwaffaq Salti airbase in Jordan from Chinese entities just before attacking it in July. “It is the clearest evidence so far that Chinese support for Iran during the war has had lethal consequences for U.S. forces, according to the officials, who say the U.S. has connected the imagery to the attack,” the Journal says. Then it adds that “the finding could deepen U.S.-China tensions ahead of the planned summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sept. 24, after months of frustration with Beijing’s rejection of U.S. warnings about Chinese companies providing imagery to Iran.”

“Trump has told his team that it is a priority for him to maintain good relations with China and Xi in particular,” the Journal says later in the piece. “Senior U.S. officials have responded by trying to avoid public confrontations with Beijing that could overshadow or derail plans for the summit.” Publicly, the administration has been playing down the impact of the imagery supplied to Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to answer when asked after the July 17 attack if the Chinese were providing Iran with targeting information, saying only that “nothing that China has done has in any way changed the trajectory of the conflict.”