We knew that the North Koreans, the Iranians, and A. Q. Khan were pushing a "proliferation for everybody" approach for all countries with interests inimical to ours (on the theory that we couldn't/wouldn't attack all such nuke-armed rogue states at once). What we didn't know was where the Chicoms stood on this, but the picture's becoming clearer now.
And about Iran, China's been helping them with that for a decade.
Look at this from 1997 on the occasion of Jiang's visit in 1997 to Clinton:
One of the main things trumpeted is the deal whereby the PRC will decrease its' help to Iran in Iran's nuclear energy program and in return the US will allow US companies to sell their nuclear reactor components to the PRC. But this agreement had a big loophole in it. It said that the PRC would not begin any new programs with Iran. But ongoing programs will continue until they are done. This is a hole big enough to drive a truck through. So it is failry empty.Source: From 1997What I think the Clinton administration ought to have done is to simply have stated that they feel that American firms should be able to make money by selling their wares to the PRC. Rather than beat around the bush with this tie-in to Iran they should have just come clean and said we want to make some dough.
One overlooked aspect of this Iran tie-in is that three countries are involved. Not much was said about this but the reports from the Iranian government were not happy. They did not appreciate the Chinese Communists using them as a bargaining chip. They also will play up to the CCP the idea that the US is pushing them around with deals like this. And a most important thing to remember is that the CCP does not want to make Iran angry at them. Currently the biggest real problem in terms of violence facing the CCP is the unrest in their western "autonomous region" of Xinjiang. Tibet gets the ink but this region has seen bombings and fighting and have a dedicated group that are attempting to wage civil war against the CCP.
The group doing this are the Uighers, a non-Han group in China. They are Muslim. I don't think that the CCP want to get on Iran's bad side in that if they do Iran might decide to get ome revenge by helping out the Uighur separatists of Xinjiang with some guns and butter. So this Iran deal is most likely a bunch of smoke.
Obviously seven year old promises were not kept.