Trump and Xi Discuss the Need to Open the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Says

BEIJING -- President Donald Trump wants China to do more to persuade Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and he discussed the issue with President Xi Jinping of China at their summit Thursday, the White House said. But it was not immediately clear whether the United States had secured any new commitments from China on helping restore shipping out of the Persian Gulf.

The White House released a statement after the summit's first meeting saying that the two had "agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy."

But there was no signal from China that Xi's government would grow more assertive in pressuring Iran to allow more ships through the strait, let alone to agree to a peace deal that would suit Trump.

Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs speaking at the ministry's daily briefing Thursday after the two leaders had met, said only that the Middle East was among the topics they discussed and that the country's policy regarding the strait had been "consistent and clear." China has previously criticized the U.S. blockade, although not recently, and has called for a ceasefire.

Before the summit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity that the United States hoped to "convince" China "to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they're doing now and trying to do now in the Persian Gulf."

The back-and-forth over the Persian Gulf underscored the additional leverage China has gained as a result of Trump's unresolved war on Iran. Iran retaliated for the war by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the main shipping route for oil from the Gulf, disrupting global energy supplies and raising gasoline prices in the United States. The standoff has left the Trump administration groping for a deal to reopen the strait.

Some analysts have said that China could seek concessions from the United States in exchange for getting Iran to agree to a deal that Trump will accept. China buys nearly all of Iran's exported oil and counts Tehran as one of its most important Middle East partners.

Some Chinese analysts have floated the idea that Beijing could impose more pressure on Iran in exchange for the United States adopting a more Beijing-friendly policy toward Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its own. The official position of the United States is that it "does not support" Taiwan's independence, but some Chinese policy advisers hope Trump will say he "opposes" it.

Henry Huiyao Wang, president of the Center for China and Globalization think tank, said in an interview in Beijing on Wednesday that the United States should toughen its official rhetoric against Taiwan "if they expect China to do more" on Iran. If China is to give an "extra push" to clinch an Iran deal, Wang said, "it certainly needs more encouragement from the U.S."

Rubio, in his interview with Fox News aboard Air Force One, said nothing about a potential quid pro quo. Instead, he argued it would be in China's own interest to get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, painting a bleak picture of the ongoing global fallout -- without acknowledging that it was a U.S. war that precipitated Iran's closure of the strait in the first place.

Chinese ships are among the vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf as a result of the strait's closure, Rubio said. He added that the situation heightened geopolitical risks for China, given that the closure "threatens to destabilize Asia more than any other part of the world, because it's heavily reliant on the straits for energy." And China's export-driven economy will suffer, Rubio went on, if "world economies are melting down because of this crisis in the straits."

"We've made the argument to the Chinese," Rubio said. "I hope it's compelling."

Iran has rejected the idea that it is the obstacle to reopening the strait, blaming the disruption of transit on what it calls an illegal U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. Speaking at a conference in India on Thursday, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the waterway was "open for all commercial vessels" but added that ships "need to cooperate with our navy forces."

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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