Following pressure from the United States, work has been halted on what intelligence agencies believe was a secret Chinese military facility under construction in a commercial port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Wall Street Journal reported that satellite imagery of the port of Khalifa had revealed suspicious construction work inside the CSP Abu Dhabi container terminal built and operated by a Chinese shipping corporation, COSCO.

CNN reports that US officials for at least a year have been closely watching the construction of what they believed was a military facility inside the commercial Khalifa port, about 50 miles from the UAE capital. The United States considers the UAE a key partner in counterterrorism efforts in the region and has thousands of troops based at an Emirati airbase 20 miles outside of Abu Dhabi.

Although China — and the UAE — portrayed the port venture as purely commercial, US intelligence has observed ships disguised as commercial vessels that officials recognized as a type typically used by the Chinese military for signals intelligence collection entering the port, according to two sources familiar with the intelligence.

“Last we checked, we had successfully convinced the Emiratis to shut down the project,” said one source familiar with the intelligence. “But it’s still a live issue.”

Four years ago. the Chinese navy established a facility in Djibouti, its first overseas base, which was placed within a Chinese-run commercial port, at Doraleh.