Just a day after Israel launched its offensive against Iran last Friday, a Chinese cargo plane apparently diverted from its flight plan to Luxembourg and appeared to fly into Iranian airspace before falling off the radar, with two more Chinese cargo planes taking the same flight path over the next two days. While the purpose of the flights and the cargo aboard the planes is currently unknown, the Boeing 747 freighters are “commonly used for transporting military equipment and weapons, and hired to fly government contract orders,” according to aviation experts.

As reported by numerous outlets, the three flights flew west from China and crossed into Kazakhstan, then flew south into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan before eventually falling off of flight radar near the Iranian border. However, the third flight that took off Monday from Shanghai appeared to have crossed into Iranian airspace, according to Flightradar24.

On Thursday afternoon, France 24, a state-owned and publicly-funded news outlet, reported that they contacted Flightradar24 about the flights in question and were told that “aircraft icons that appear to be flying over Iran are in fact only ‘estimation data’ shown ‘when a user clicks on a flight,’ to give an indication of the direction in which the aircraft should be heading.”

France 24 further noted that the air traffic monitoring site FlightAware appeared to show that the three Chinese flights in question stopped near the Iranian border in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan to refuel before continuing on a flight path toward Luxembourg.

In a statement posted on Facebook Sunday, Luxembourg-based Cargolux, which operates the three flights, claimed that the planes did not enter Iranian airspace. “Our flight tracking systems provide real-time data, which confirms that no flight entered Iranian airspace,” the post read. “Any claims to the contrary are completely unfounded.”

China has historically had close ties with Iran. China is Iran’s largest trading partner, and Iran — the ninth largest global oil producer — is highly valuable for China since it supplies 10% of its imported oil. In June 2020, China signed a 25-year agreement with Iran to invest $400 billion in Tehran’s economy “in exchange for steady supplies of heavily discounted crude oil.” According to China Middle East relations expert Andrea Ghiselli, “The collapse of the current regime would be a significant blow and would generate a lot of instability in the Middle East, ultimately undermining Chinese economic and energy interests.”

So far, Beijing has publicly signaled that it does not want to get directly involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Chinese President Xi Jinping remarked Tuesday that he was “deeply worried” about Israel’s military operation, further stating that “[a]ll parties should work to de-escalate the conflict as soon as possible and prevent the situation from worsening further.”

China expert and author Gordon Chang, who serves as a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, expressed suspicion about the purpose of the Chinese flights due to their behavior.

“We do not know what the cargo planes from China were carrying or even if they made it into Iranian airspace, but the fact that the pilots turned off transponders suggests China is up to no good,” he told The Washington Stand.