China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) has sent chipmaking equipment to Iran’s military.

Citing two senior Trump administration officials, Reuters reported that the company started sending Iran chipmaking tools about a year ago and is continuing to do so, the government believes.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that SMIC has “almost certainly” provided technology training on how to use its technology. It is unclear where the shipments of tools originated from, and if they’re in violation of US sanctions.

Reuters said SMIC, the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and a spokesperson ​for the Iranian mission to the United Nations did not respond to its requests for comment.

The report went on to note that during the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, China has maintained normal commercial trade with Iran. Additionally, the Chinese government has not publicly taken a side, with its Foreign Minister this week calling for peace talks to take place as soon as possible.

The US Commerce Department added SMIC to its sanctions list in 2020, requiring companies to seek individual export licenses to sell equipment to the company. A few months later, the company was added to the government’s Entity List, making it even harder for SMIC to obtain US products and services.

In the last two years, both GlobalFoundries and Applied Materials have been fined by the US government for shipping wafers and chip manufacturing tools to SMIC or an affiliate of the government. Applied was fined $252 million for making $126m-worth of illegal shipments on 56 occasions between 2021 and 2022 via its South Korean subsidiary.

GlobalFoundries, meanwhile, was fined $500,000 by the Department of Commerce for shipping chip components to SJ Semiconductor (SJS), an affiliate of SMIC, although the breach was blamed on a data entry error that meant SJS was not caught in GF’s transaction screening system.