admin US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that China has agreed not to send weapons to its close partner Iran and that he has received personal assurances from leader Xi Jinping.
“They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to his planned May 14-15 summit with Xi in Beijing.
Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo in a separate interview aired on Wednesday that Xi had “essentially” promised not to deliver weapons.
“I had heard that China’s giving weapons to, I mean — you’re seeing it all over the place — to Iran,” Trump said.
“And I wrote him a letter asking him not to do that, and he wrote me a letter saying that essentially he’s not doing that.”
An another post on his Truth Social, Trump insisted that “China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also — And the World.”
The conflict in the Middle East has added tension to the already complicated relationship between the world’s top economic powers.
The Trump-Xi summit had originally been scheduled for March but was delayed due to Trump’s decision to launch the war.
Trump was asked in the Fox interview about reports that China had recently conducted a major cyber attack against the FBI. He did not directly confirm the report, but said: “We do it to them. They do it to us.”
“China’s China,” he said. “They’re never easy, but we’re doing great with China.” Trump said he was “the toughest person” on China.
Also on Wednesday, China’s top diplomat told his Iranian counterpart that Beijing “supports maintaining the momentum of the ceasefire and peace talks” in a phone call, as negotiators from Pakistan landed in Tehran to discuss a second round of US-Iran talks.
Peace talks are “in the fundamental interests of the Iranian people and are also the shared hope of regional countries and the international community,” Wang Yi said, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
He said China was willing to continue to play a “constructive role” towards peace in the Middle East after a first round of Iran-US talks in Islamabad at the weekend failed to reach an agreement.
Agence France-Presse
