



How Xi is playing his Iran cards as Trump heads to Beijing
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.When President Trump arrives in Beijing this week for a summit with Xi Jinping, the Iran file will likely be on the agenda—whether or not either leader wants it there.Just last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made his first trip to Beijing since the war began, a visit timed to land days before Trump’s plane touches down. The choreography was hardly subtle. Tehran wanted to remind Washington that Iran still has a friend in the world’s second-largest economy.
Beijing, in turn, wanted credit for hosting a beleaguered partner without committing to anything Trump couldn’t live with.That balancing act is the entire Chinese policy, said Evan Medeiros, a former senior U.S. national-security adviser and now a professor at Georgetown University. And it is harder to pull off than it looks.Xi is trying to thread several needles at once. China imports vast quantities of crude through the Strait of Hormuz, making stability in the Persian Gulf a core economic interest.
Beijing also counts Iran’s Gulf rivals, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as among its most consequential economic partners in the region. Those ties give Beijing reason to avoid appearing too closely aligned with Tehran.Yet it values Iran as a strategic counterweight—a state that ties down American attention and military assets, a supplier of discounted oil and a customer for Chinese technology. In addition, Xi doesn’t want a confrontation with the U.S.
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