The president departs Washington Tuesday afternoon for a state visit hijacked by a collapsing peace deal and one urgent question: will China pull Tehran back from the brink?
Air Force One lifts off this afternoon for one of the most consequential state visits of
President Donald Trump’s second term — and almost none of it will be about what was
originally planned.
Trump arrives in Beijing on Wednesday for a three-day state visit hosted by President Xi
Jinping that was supposed to focus on trade, aerospace and a long-promised reset of
the US-China relationship. Instead, the trip has been overrun by the war with Iran, which
Trump declared on Monday is now hanging by a thread.
The ceasefire, Trump said, is on “massive life support,” comparing Tehran’s latest
counter-proposal to the verdict of a doctor giving a patient a one-percent chance of
surviving. Hours later he called Iran’s offer a “piece of garbage.” Inside the West Wing,
aides briefing reporters said Trump is now more seriously weighing a resumption of
major combat operations than at any point in recent weeks.
That shift is what makes Beijing matter. China buys the lion’s share of Iranian oil, holds
enormous diplomatic leverage over Tehran, and is the one capital — alongside Moscow
— that Iran’s leaders cannot ignore. US officials say Trump will press Xi to lean on Iran
to accept a deal, restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, and agree
to the supervised removal of its enriched uranium stockpile, the sticking point that has
blown up the latest round of talks.
The visit had already been postponed once because of the Iran war. Originally penciled
in for early April, the meeting was bumped to May after the conflict erupted and the
White House decided Trump could not be away from Washington while combat
operations were live. Chinese officials only confirmed the new dates — May 13 to 15 —
on Monday, hours before the ceasefire row exploded into public view.
