U.S. President Donald Trump says relations with China have never been better. But whether that warmth can help Washington find a way out of the Iran war remains less clear.
Trump’s cordial White House summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday produced an endorsement from Beijing of renewed U.S.-Iran talks, but no commitments to push Tehran toward a settlement.
That’s because although China holds considerable influence over Iran, it sees little incentive to use it on Washington’s behalf while the war both occupies the United States and deepens Tehran’s dependence on Beijing, analysts told MBN.
“Certainly, China has a large degree of leverage over Iran,” said Grant Rumley, a former Pentagon official and the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s program on great power competition and the Middle East.
“But there have been no indications that China is willing to exercise this leverage,” he said. “Xi looks quite content to let the U.S. get bogged down in this conflict.”
Beijing’s case for cooperation
China’s official account of the summit said Xi supports a return to the June 17 Islamabad Memorandum, which paused hostilities and briefly opened the Strait of Hormuz. Xi also backs U.S.-Iran talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Beijing, however, made no commitment to reduce support for Iran, or to press Iranian leaders to reach a settlement. Instead, it kept the emphasis on Washington and Tehran returning to negotiations.
China remains Iran’s biggest oil buyer, providing a vital source of revenue for Tehran during the war. Chinese companies have also supplied weapons components to Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen, according to the U.S. Treasury Department .
Rumley said that he believed Beijing could, if it wanted, greatly influence Tehran’s approach to the war by reducing its economic support and curbing transfers of missile precursor materials and dual-use components to Iran’s military.
The obstacle, he said, was its willingness to use its influence.
“Russia is now dramatically dependent on China to continue its war against Ukraine, and the Iranian regime is increasingly dependent on China to stay in power,” Rumley told MBN. “This is a quite favorable arrangement for a country that sees itself as a superpower on par with the U.S.”
Xi used his public remarks at the White House on Thursday to argue that, as the world’s two major powers, China and the United States could pursue their geopolitical ambitions without confrontation. He called for regular military-to-military dialogue and a focus on strengthening relations.
“Without our cooperation, it would be hard to solve many of the world’s problems,” Xi said before the dinner.
Trump’s reluctance to disrupt bilateral ties is useful to Beijing, argued Rush Doshi, director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ China Strategy Initiative.
Doshi pointed to delayed Taiwan arms sales and Washington’s muted response to Chinese support for Tehran as evidence. Beijing believes that its relative geopolitical standing is growing, he wrote.
“Beijing wants to extend what it sees as Trump’s de-escalatory approach through the rest of his term,” he wrote. “After that point, Washington’s leverage diminishes further.”
Costs beyond the Middle East
The Iran war’s military costs are also weakening Washington’s position in Asia, according to Ryan Brobst, the deputy director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Brobst told MBN that U.S. stocks of long-range strike missiles and defensive interceptors had been heavily depleted by the extended war in the Middle East. He warned the strain may even influence Beijing’s calculations on Taiwan.
“The risk is that China sees that as an opportunity to take action against Taiwan,” he said. “It’s important for the United States to work to fix this as fast as possible.”
China claims the democratic island as its territory and opposes U.S. weapons sales to its military. To ease ties with Beijing, the Trump administration was reportedly considering postponing the announcement of major arms sales to Taiwan until after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Shenzhen in November, and the G20 meeting in Miami in December.
Hopes for Chinese help
For Gulf governments, the most immediate concern remains whether Beijing can find any reason to help bring the fighting in the Middle East to an end. Rumley said they were likely disappointed by the absence of a more substantive Chinese initiative.
“Time and again, the countries in the region which are discontented with U.S. policies look to China to exert its influence and balance against the U.S.,” he said. “And time and again these countries are disappointed as China continues to act in a narrow way, focused only on its own self-interest.”
APEC and the G20 could give Xi and Trump two more chances to meet this year. That’s two more chances for Trump to seek help on Iran, but also test what Beijing wants in return.
“We’ve never gotten along better,” Trump said during a toast to the Chinese president at Thursday dinner
Brobst, though, says the real test is what Washington gets out of friendly ties.
“It’s about what policy changes the United States can get from China,” he said.
Vivian Lee contributed reporting .