The Beijing regime has provided the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, the United Nations watchdog into nuclear proliferation, with "a wealth of documentation" it had given to Iran on how to manufacture nuclear armed bombs.
It is the second time the Beijing regime has betrayed an ally for its own ends.
In January 1991, on the eve of the first Gulf War, Chinese diplomats secretly met with senior officers in the first Bush Administration in Washington.
Then, as today, at stake for China was its place in the world.
On the Washington conference table that cold January day sixteen years ago was a very simple offer. In return for Beijing's support at the United Nations for war against Iraq—which until then it had rejected—the United States would make no public objection to China's "final solution" for all their student demonstrators on Tiananmen Square.
Beijing had decided the students would stand trial the day after the deadline against Iraq expired. In return for US compliance, President Bush would have China's support for the war.
Last week what became known as the Tiananmen Trump was played again by Beijing with the same cynical effect.
It revealed to the IAEA all the designs for centrifuges, which produce enriched uranium, it had secretly provided to Iran over the past years.
While the IAEA has refused to comment on the haul of documents China has handed over, an MI6 source described the information as the "best piece of whistleblowing the West has on the Tehran regime".
General Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, said last week: "I am satisfied that Iran has obtained from the Chinese material to give its nuclear program a huge fill-up. Now we know exactly what we are facing".
John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations and a long-time opponent of China's ties to Iran, believes the Beijing decision to reveal the details to the IAEA about the full extent of its support for the Ayatollahs "should also be seen as Beijing's efforts to get on side in the Olympics and present itself in the best possible light over its behaviour in Tibet".
Meantime, a new crisis has broken out for Beijing. Muslim separatists demanding independence for China's western region have started an expanding protest movement.
There are 8 million Uighur Muslims among the population of 19 million in Xinjiang province who have begun to protest against the clampdown in Tibet.
Radio Free Asia, funded by the US government, say there had been "at least a hundred arrests" for adhering to the "three evil forces"—a Beijing expression that refers to separatism, religious extremism and terrorism.
Gordon Thomas is the author of Secrets & Lies: A History of CIA Mind Control and Germ Warfare (Octavo Editions, USA) and the forthcoming Inside British Intelligence (JR Books, UK).
Copyright G2 Bulletin, Washington, D.C., USA, and Gordon Thomas.
