Reuters: China will not stop supporting Iran

Afghan Voice Agency (AVA) - International Service: The Reuters news agency wrote in a report that Donald Trump is likely to ask his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for help in resolving the costly and unpopular US war with Iran, but it is unlikely to get the support he wants.

 

The report states that although some analysts believe that Xi may be willing to encourage Iran to return to the negotiating table, he will not be willing to cut off economic support for his most important regional partner or stop sending "dual-use" goods needed by Iranian forces.

 

According to the Reuters report, while Trump has powerful pressure tools at his disposal, including threatening to sanction major Chinese banks, using these levers could come at an unacceptable cost to the United States.

 

According to the report, with hopes for a deal between the United States and Iran that could end the war fading and the ceasefire between the two sides looking fragile, Trump aides see Beijing, Iran’s biggest buyer of oil, as one of the few players who can persuade Iran to reach an agreement with Washington.

 

Reuters believes that Washington is seeking to convince China that its interests are also in ending the Iran war.

 

According to the report, despite China’s demand for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran remains its strategic ally in the region and a counterweight to US influence, which is why Xi is preventing China from using its considerable influence over Tehran to force it to make major concessions.

 

China is in a strong position vis-à-vis the US

Henrietta Levin, a senior fellow at a Washington think tank, said Xi was heading into the meeting with Trump with “increasing confidence” because he had benefited from Trump’s backtracking on last year’s tariff campaign.

 

A White House spokesman told reporters on Tuesday that Trump did not need China’s help to persuade Iran, citing the US naval blockade. “The Iranian regime knows that the current situation is unsustainable for them, and while negotiators are trying to reach an agreement, President Trump is holding all the cards,” he said.

 

However, a Chinese embassy spokesman said Beijing opposed “illegal unilateral sanctions” and urged Chinese companies to act in accordance with the law. He added that the immediate priority was to prevent a resumption of hostilities, not to exploit the situation to blame other countries.

 

The US has limited options for pressuring China, including sanctions and tariffs, but targeting China’s banking sector is highly questionable. Some minor measures have been taken against Chinese entities that have been implicated in circumventing sanctions, but they have not had an impact on trade flows.

 

Experts believe that Washington’s reluctance to hit China’s banking system reflects concerns about heavy retaliation. Sanctioning even a small or medium-sized Chinese bank could trigger a cycle of retaliation that would reignite the old economic war and bring back the triple-digit tariffs of that era, which would be politically costly for Trump and inflationary for the US economy.

 

According to Reuters, targeting China’s big banks could also force Beijing to turn to its greatest leverage: vital and rare earth minerals; China has a near monopoly on refining and processing rare earth elements and threatened to restrict their supply last year amid the trade crisis.

 

Referring to these issues, Reuters concluded at the end of its report that beyond economic interests, China has learned from the experience of watching US intervention in the Middle East that it should avoid getting too entangled in the region and will likely resist calls for serious pressure on Iran.

 

A former US State Department official has made it clear that obtaining deep Chinese participation in this area “will not be easy under any circumstances” because Beijing also sees the political risks and quagmires.