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Trump Downplays Rift With China on Iran Before Summit 60%
By AAMER MADHANI69% DARLENE SUPERVILLE52%
5/12/2026, 7:59:44 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including False Dilemma, Framing Effect, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 21% saturation with 245 hits. Analysis detected 1,474 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,169 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.1% and a BS Rank of 60% (8,550 of 21,176 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 59.60% of the article peer group.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday downplayed differences with President Xi Jinping over the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran as he headed to Beijing for a high-stakes summit with the Chinese leader.
Trump has been unsuccessful in pressing Xi to use China's considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to U.S. terms to end the more than 2-month-old war — or at least reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Just before he left the White House on Tuesday for his flight to Beijing, Trump sought to downplay differences with Xi over Iran and the shadow the conflict is casting on global oil markets.
"We're going to have a long talk about it.
I think he's been relatively good, to be honest with you," Trump said of his plans to discuss the conflict with Xi.
Minutes later, he added: "We have a lot of things to discuss.
I wouldn't say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control."
But Trump over the course of the conflict has veered between venting that China, the world's biggest buyer of Iranian oil, hasn't done more to get the regime in line and acknowledging that Xi's government helped de-escalate the conflict last month by nudging Tehran back to ceasefire talks when negotiations wobbled.
Ahead of the visit, Trump sought to minimize the need to persuade Xi to change China's posture on Iran.
Instead, the Trump administration seems determined not to let differences on Iran overshadow efforts to make headway on other difficult matters in the complicated relationship — including trade and further Chinese cooperation to block exports of fentanyl precursors.
"I don't think we need any help with Iran," Trump said when asked by a reporter if he would press Xi to pressure Tehran.
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 "subtle message of discontent to Iran" for closing the Strait of Hormuz and to the U.S. for its blockade of Iranian shipping, said Ahmed Aboudouh, a specialist on China's influence in the Middle East with the London-based Chatham House think tank.
"They are very cautious, risk averse, and they don't want to be involved in anything that would drag them into something that they don't consider their problem," he said.
Meanwhile, Kuwait on Tuesday accused Iran of dispatching an armed Revolutionary Guard team to launch a failed attack earlier this month on an island in the Middle East nation that is home to a China-funded port project.
Iran didn't immediately acknowledge the allegation by Kuwait, which came under repeated attack by Iran in the war and even during the ceasefire still holding in the region.
In recent days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have stepped up their calls 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.
The State Department announced on Friday it was sanctioning four entities, including three China-based companies, for providing sensitive satellite imagery that enables Iranian military strikes against U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Earlier, the Treasury Department moved to target Chinese oil refineries accused of buying 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.
Beijing has called the sanctions "illegal unilateral pressure" and enacted a blocking statute — passed in 2021 and never used until now — that prohibits any Chinese entity from recognizing or complying with the sanctions.
Ahead of Trump's arrival, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week hosted his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, in Beijing.
The Chinese foreign minister used the moment to defend Iran's right to develop civilian nuclear energy.
Xi has also implicitly criticized the U.S. over the war.
He has said that safeguarding international rule of law is paramount, adding it "must not be selectively applied or disregarded," nor should the world be allowed to revert "to the law of the jungle."
Like Trump, Xi also has plenty of reason not to let differences over Iran adversely affect other facets of the relationship, analysts say.
Beijing wants to guard against further deterioration of the U.S.-China relationship — something that would add further challenges to its economy.
Since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February, however, there have been difficult moments between Trump and Xi that threatened to set back the relative stability in their relationship.
China has long supported Iran's ballistic missile program and backed it with dual-use industrial components that can be used for missile production, according to the U.S. government.
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 he later backed away from the threat, asserting that he had received written assurance from Xi that he would not provide Tehran with weapons.
Days later, Trump said cryptically that the Navy had intercepted a Chinese vessel carrying a "gift" for Iran.
He has not offered further explanation.
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 trade war.
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 — before the governments backed off from inflicting maximalist penalties on each other.
The two sides reached a truce in their long-running trade disputes in October.
Trump and other administration officials have made the case that the Iran conflict — particularly the closure of the strait — 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 and has an export-driven economy.
"You can't buy from them if you can't ship it there, and you can't buy from them if your economy is being destroyed by what Iran is doing," Rubio told reporters last week, making the case that it was in China's interest for Iran to let traffic resume.
But for now, China has shown little interest in wading deeper into the conflict and has appeared reluctant to be seen siding with Washington.
"It will be difficult to get the Chinese deeply involved under any circumstances," said Kurt Campbell, a former deputy secretary of state during the Biden administration and chair of The Asia Group.
"They will want to be careful because they can see political quicksand as well as the next guy."
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Madhani reported from Beijing.
Associated Press writers Didi Tang in Washington, Adam Schreck in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.
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