{"id":109584,"date":"2026-05-12T05:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T05:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/109584\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T05:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T05:46:09","slug":"trump-and-xi-appear-intent-on-keeping-deep-differences-over-iran-war-from-overshadowing-china-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/109584\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Xi appear intent on keeping deep differences over Iran war from overshadowing China summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 President Donald Trump<\/a> on Tuesday is set to leave for Beijing to meet<\/a> with President Xi Jinping<\/a> after weeks of trying, and failing, to persuade the Chinese government to use its considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to U.S. terms to end the two-month old war \u2014 or at the very least, reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump has veered between venting that China, the world\u2019s biggest buyer of Iranian oil, hasn’t done more to get the Islamic Republic in line, and acknowledging that Xi’s government helped<\/a> de-escalate the conflict last month by nudging Tehran back to ceasefire talks when negotiations wobbled.<\/p>\n

But ahead of the U.S. leader’s high-stakes visit,<\/a> the White House has set low expectations that Trump will be able to persuade Xi to change China’s posture.<\/p>\n

Instead, the administration seems determined not to let differences on Iran<\/a> overshadow efforts to make headway on other difficult matters in the complicated relationship \u2014 ranging from trade<\/a> to further Chinese cooperation to block exports of fentanyl precursors.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want this to be something that derails the broader relationship or the agreements that might come out of our meeting in Beijing,\u201d U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer<\/a> said on Bloomberg TV last week. <\/p>\n

US administration sanctioned China ahead of the trip<\/p>\n

Beijing publicly insists that it wants to see the war end, and has been working diplomatically behind the scenes to help its ally Pakistan push to broker a peace agreement. It has also sent a \u201csubtle message of discontent to Iran\u201d for closing the Strait of Hormuz, and to the U.S. for its blockade of Iranian shipping, said Ahmed Aboudouh, a specialist on China\u2019s influence in the Middle East with the London-based Chatham House think tank.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are very cautious, risk-adverse, and they don\u2019t want to be involved in anything that would drag them into something that they don\u2019t consider their problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In recent days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a> and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/a> have stepped up their calls<\/a> for China to use its influence to help reopen the strait, through which about 20% of the world’s crude flowed before the war began. <\/p>\n

The State Department announced on Friday that it was sanctioning four entities, including three China-based firms, for providing sensitive satellite imagery<\/a> that enables Iranian military strikes against U.S. forces in the Middle East. Earlier, the Treasury Department moved to target Chinese oil refineries<\/a> accused of purchasing oil from Tehran, as well as shippers of the oil. The sanctions cut off the companies from the U.S. financial system and penalize anyone who does business with them.<\/p>\n

Beijing has called the sanctions \u201cillegal unilateral pressure\u201d and enacted a blocking statute \u2014 passed in 2021 and never used until now \u2014 that prohibits any Chinese entity from recognizing or complying with the sanctions.<\/p>\n

Ahead of Trump’s arrival, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week hosted<\/a> his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in Beijing. The Chinese foreign minister used the moment to defend Iran\u2019s right to develop civilian nuclear energy.<\/p>\n

Xi has also offered implicit criticism of the U.S. over the war. He has said that safeguarding international rule of law is paramount, adding it \u201cmust not be selectively applied or disregarded,\u201d nor should the world be allowed to revert \u201cto the law of the jungle.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Both China and the US want to avoid a return to a tariff war<\/p>\n

Trump on Monday downplayed differences with China over Iran and underscored that Xi wants to see the strait reopened. \u201cHe\u2019d like to see it get done,\u201d Trump said of the Chinese leader.<\/p>\n

Like Trump, Xi also has plenty of reason to not let differences over Iran impact other facets of the relationship, analysts say. China imports about half its crude oil and almost one-third of its liquefied natural gas from Middle East countries affected by the closure of the strait, according to China\u2019s General Administration of Customs.<\/p>\n

Beijing wants to guard against further deterioration of the U.S.-China relationship<\/a> \u2014 something that would add further challenges to its economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think for Xi, a win is continued stability without surrender,\u201d said Craig Singleton, senior director for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ China program. \u201cHe wants the summit to validate China\u2019s superpower status, preserve the tariff predictability, and to reaffirm that Washington has to deal with Beijing on Beijing\u2019s terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes in late February, there have been difficult moments between Trump and Xi that threatened to set back the relative stability in their relationship.<\/p>\n

China has long supported Iran\u2019s ballistic missile program and backed it with dual-use industrial components that can be used for missile production, according to the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

Last month, Trump threatened to impose a 50% tariff on China after reports that Beijing was preparing to deliver a shipment of new air defense systems to Iran, but later backed away from the threat, claiming that he had received written assurance from Xi<\/a> that he would not provide Tehran with weaponry. Days later, Trump said cryptically that the U.S. Navy had intercepted a Chinese vessel carrying a \u201cgift\u201d for Iran. He has not offered further explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been moments where it seemed like it was going to spill over,\u201d said Patricia Kim, who co-leads the Assessing China Project at the Brookings Institution. \u201cBut I think, again, the two sides are pretty invested in not allowing this to destabilize the broader relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Trump and Xi may be eager to avoid creating dark economic clouds, as they did last year, when the two powers appeared on the precipice of a massive trade war. <\/p>\n

Trump had set tariffs on Chinese goods at 145% and China announced a further tightening of rare-earth export controls that would have hurt U.S industry \u2014 before the governments backed off from inflicting maximalist penalties on each other. The two sides reached a fragile truce in their long-running trade disputes<\/a> in October.<\/p>\n

Trump and other administration officials have made the case that the conflict \u2014 particularly the closure of the strait \u2014 has caused greater harm to China and its Pacific neighbors than it has to the United States, which is far less dependent on Middle East oil.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is an export-driven economy. That means they depend on other countries to buy from them,\u201d Rubio told reporters last week, making the case that it was in China’s interest for Iran to let traffic resume. \u201cYou can\u2019t buy from them if you can\u2019t ship it there, and you can\u2019t buy from them if your economy is being destroyed by what Iran is doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But for now, China has shown little interest in wading deeper into the conflict and has appeared reluctant to be seen siding with Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be difficult to get the Chinese deeply involved under any circumstances,\u201d said Kurt Campbell, a former deputy Secretary of State during the Biden administration and chairman of The Asia Group. \u201cThey will want to be careful because they can see political quicksand as well as the next guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Didi Tang in Washington, Adam Schreck in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 President Donald Trump on Tuesday is set to leave for Beijing to meet with President Xi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[211,9989,988,38,34,12609,210,37710,2288,991,771,82,986],"class_list":{"0":"post-109584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-abbas-araghchi","9":"tag-ahmed-aboudouh","10":"tag-craig-singleton","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-kurt-campbell","14":"tag-marco-rubio","15":"tag-patricia-kim","16":"tag-scott-bessent","17":"tag-wang-yi","18":"tag-washington-news","19":"tag-world-news","20":"tag-xi-jinping"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116560028110212470","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}