On May 5, the Wall Street Journal reported that a Chinese company called Xiamen Victory Technology was soliciting potential Iranian customers with offers to sell Limbach L550 engines. The engines are used in the notorious Iranian-designed Shahed-136 suicide drone employed by Iran, Russia, and the Houthis to strike shipping and infrastructure from the Red Sea to Kyiv.

Iran Watch had received this email solicitation two months earlier, on March 5, and shared it with the Journal. The email’s sender, who used the name Kristoff Chen, said in response to the Journal’s request for comment that the company used AI to contact potential customers, which generated the misdirected email—thereby earning Xiamen Victory Technology some unwanted publicity.

The email message received by Iran Watch on March 5.

The email provided evidence indicating that a family of companies headquartered in China have marketed—and may have sold—the L550 engine to customers in Iran. Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Company is a Chinese company sanctioned in 2024 for selling L550 engines to Russia. It is the sister company of the L550’s original German designer, Limbach Flugmotoren GmbH, which was acquired in 2017 by Xiamen-based Fujian Delong Aviation Technology. Both Xiamen Limbach and Fujian Delong are controlled by the Chinese businessman Chen Congming (Congming Chen). A December 2025 Iran Watch report traced the parallel timeline of this corporate family’s development during the 2010s and Iran’s mass production and proliferation of the Shahed-136. But, at that time, the report could not fully establish that the Chinese firms were supplying the engines to Iran.

Xiamen Victory’s website, now taken down but described in the Journal article, characterized the firm as Limbach Flugmotoren’s “key affiliate or partner in China” and displayed a Chinese-language Limbach promotional video. Both of those things point to Xiamen Limbach—which is the formal Limbach affiliate in China—and suggest that Xiamen Victory was acting on behalf of Xiamen Limbach or with its authorization. The video included shots of what appeared to be Xiamen Limbach’s offices, including plaques with Xiamen Limbach’s name and a wall display in Chinese with a biography of Chen Congming, who is Xiamen Limbach’s chairman.

A screenshot from the Limbach promotional video found on Xiamen Victory Technology Company's website. The Chinese text begins with "Mr. Chen Congming, born in 1952, is an entrepreneurial talent..."

There is an additional connection between Xiamen Limbach and Xiamen Victory. The Journal reported, and Chinese corporate records confirm, that the address given on Xiamen Victory’s website is registered to Xiamen Weituo Keli Company, a firm established in 2016 by Xiamen University of Technology (XMUT) professor Chen Shuixuan. In late 2022, Xiamen Limbach chairman Chen Congming gave a speech at XMUT in which he said that Chen Shuixuan and another faculty member led a university team that collaborated with Xiamen Limbach on research related to the local production and design of aircraft piston engines—a category that includes the L550 and other models Xiamen Limbach produces.

Several questions remain unanswered, including the identity of Kristoff Chen, whether Xiamen Victory was acting as a front company or a dealer for Xiamen Limbach, and whether Xiamen Victory actually completed any sales to Iranian customers, especially in early March when Iran Watch received the email and while intense fighting was taking place between Iran and the United States.

Nonetheless, the episode illustrates that some entrepreneurial Chinese business owners are as willing to sell dual-use goods to Iran as they are to Russia and that sanctioning one company, in this case Xiamen Limbach, does not shut down a proliferation network. As our December report explains, more will have to be done if the United States and its allies wish to disrupt the flow of Shahed-136 engines and other dual-use goods from the factories of China to the battlefields of the Persian Gulf and Ukraine.

Network Map: The Xiamen Limbach Corporate Family and Its Connections

Credit: Wisconsin Project. Click here to open an enlarged version of the network map in a new tab.