Trump says Xi agrees Iran must open strait, China says war shouldn’t have started
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jana Choukeir
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE/DUBAI, May 16 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that Tehran should reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but China gave no indication it would bear its weight.
Trump, who returned from Beijing on Friday after two days of talks with Xi, said he was considering whether to lift US sanctions on Chinese oil companies buying Iranian oil. The largest buyer of Iranian oil is China.
“I’m not asking for any favors, because when you ask for favors, you have to give favors in return,” Trump said when asked by an Air Force One reporter whether Xi had made a firm commitment to pressure the Iranians to reopen the vital strait.
Xi did not comment on his talks with Trump on Iran, but China’s foreign ministry expressed disappointment with the Iran war, calling it a conflict that “never should have happened, has no reason to continue.”
‘WE WANT THE THROATS TO OPEN’
Iran effectively closed the strait, which carries one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supply, before the United States and Israel launched an attack on February 28. The disruption in shipping caused the largest oil supply crisis in history and sent oil prices soaring.
Thousands of Iranians have been killed during US and Israeli airstrikes, and thousands more have been killed in renewed fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon.
The US paused its attacks last month but began a port blockade. Tehran has said it will not remove the blockade in the strait until the United States lifts the blockade. Trump threatened to continue attacks if Iran did not reach an agreement.
“We don’t want them to have nuclear weapons, we want the straits to be opened,” Trump said with Xi in Beijing.
To Trump’s disappointment, Iran, which has long denied that it intends to build nuclear weapons, has refused to end nuclear research or give up its secret stockpile of enriched uranium.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran had received messages from the United States showing that Washington was willing to continue negotiations.
“We hope that as the negotiations progress, we will reach a good outcome so that the Strait of Hormuz can be fully secured and we can accelerate the normalization of traffic in the strait,” he told reporters in New Delhi.
Explaining that he has run out of patience with Iran in an interview broadcast on Fox News’ “Hannity” program on Thursday, Trump said Tehran “needs to make a deal.”
Oil prices rose around 3 percent to $109 per barrel on Friday [O/R] US Treasury raises concerns about lack of progress in resolving dispute [US/] It reached its highest level in nearly a year on expectations that the Fed might need to raise interest rates.
Talks on ending the war, which has become an obligation for Trump ahead of the US congressional elections in November, have been on hold since last week, with Iran and the US rejecting each other’s latest proposals.
Iran would welcome China’s contribution, Araqchi said on Friday, adding that Tehran was trying to give diplomacy a chance but did not trust the United States, which curtailed previous rounds of talks by launching airstrikes.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jana Choukeir, additional reporting by Reuters Newsrooms; Writing by William Mallard; Editing by Tom Hogue)
