Analysts Nathan Hughes and Rodger Baker examine the tactical and strategic reasons behind China's blocking of a United Nations report on missile technology sharing between Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. Nathan Hughes: Predictable denials, from Iran to China, quickly ensued following the leak of the existence of a confidential U.N. report on ongoing cooperation between Iran and North Korean on ballistic missile development as well as Chinese facilitation of the exchange of materiel between the two countries. Trilateral cooperation between not just North Korea and Iran, but Pakistan as well, in ballistic missile development has been long established and long known, as has Chinese facilitation. But it is this trilateral relationship that is the most overt, not in any official sense but in the simultaneous existence of near-identical medium-range ballistic missiles in each country's arsenal, in each case, the longest-range operationally fielded missile in the countries. Alternately known as the Shahab-3 to Iran, the Nodong series to North Korea and the Ghauri to the Pakistanis, these missiles have their roots in Soviet SCUD technology, and Soviet SCUD technology is really a fairly rudimentary extension of Nazi V-2 technology from World War II. North Korea has been the most successful earliest in extending and expanding this technology beyond the intentions of its original designers, using SCUD technology as the basis for its earliest attempts at putting a small satellite into orbit. All three countries are heavily invested in improving and expanding their ballistic missile arsenals, both through ongoing efforts to acquire newer technologies, techniques and designs from abroad as well as domestic innovation, development and manufacturing. STRATFOR's Vice President of Strategic Intelligence, Rodger Baker, will take a closer look at the situation from China's perspective. Rodger Baker: The Chinese have several reasons for trying to block this report, or the release of the report, at this time. One of the first is, of course, North Korea is an ally of China, and the Chinese have been working behind the scenes to try to restart the Six-Party Talks, restart nuclear talks with North Korea; if this report comes out, it could throw those off balance again. Perhaps one of the more pressing elements for the Chinese, however, is how this report could reinvigorate something like the U.S. proliferation security initiative. That initiative, which was set up under the previous U.S. president, basically gives a sense of permission for the U.S. and its allies to interdict foreign ships that they consider to be carrying clandestine materials, particularly North Korean ships. The Chinese don't want to see an increase of this type of activity in the South China Sea or the East China Sea, where Beijing is becoming more active in asserting its own claims; they don't want to see this as a justification for the U.S. to increase its naval presence in these areas. The Chinese may not directly support North Korean missile development or Iranian development or Pakistani development, but there are some benefits that they can gain from this. Certainly, North Korea remains a very important issue on the global front, and the Chinese are the ones who can step in and then play that for their own particular political benefits, being the only country that can negotiate on behalf of the North Koreans or calm the North Koreans down. On the Pakistani front, the Chinese are always looking at ways to counterbalance the potential rise of Indian power, particularly to keep India out of expanding its naval capabilities into the Indian Ocean basin, and by having a land power that keeps them busy, that helps. From the Iranian program, again, this keeps the United States locked down in the Middle East; it keeps the U.S. less active in East Asia. The Chinese really don't have a lot to lose in trying to block this report. It's not necessarily out of the normal realm of behavior, so we don't expect a lot of political fallout from it, but certainly the U.S. and other countries are already going to be using the information from the report, whether it has its official release or not.