BEIJING: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met China\u2019s \u200btop diplomat in Beijing on Wednesday, underscoring close ties between the two countries shortly before US President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to meet with Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n
Araqchi\u2019s visit, announced by state news agency Xinhua, is his first trip to China since the US-Israeli war on Iran set off the most severe global oil supply shock in history and undermined the energy security of China, the world\u2019s top crude importer.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged China to intensify its diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to open \u200cthe Strait of \u200cHormuz to international shipping.<\/p>\n
Bessent said Trump and Xi \u200bwould \u200cexchange \u2060views on \u200bIran \u2060in person during their May 14 to 15 talks in Beijing. But he emphasized the two will seek to keep the steady US-China relationship on track following a trade truce in October.<\/p>\n
He urged China to \u201cjoin us in this international operation\u201d to open the strait, but did not specify what actions Beijing should take. He added that China and Russia should stop blocking initiatives at the United Nations, including a resolution encouraging steps to protect commercial shipping in \u2060the strait.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the US and Iran launched new \u200cattacks in the Gulf as they wrestled for control \u200cover the strait with duelling maritime blockades, threatening what was \u200balready a fragile truce.<\/p>\n
Trump later said the \u200cUS Navy would help ships pass through the strait. But that operation was paused \u200cafter Trump on Tuesday said there had been \u201cgreat progress\u201d made toward a comprehensive agreement with Iran.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate reaction from Tehran.<\/p>\n
The Iranian foreign minister on Monday said the attacks, taking place after he said Tehran was looking into Trump\u2019s request for negotiations, showed there was no military solution to \u200cthe crisis.<\/p>\n
China has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity and refrained from forceful criticism of the US\u2019 conduct of \u2060the war so that \u2060the summit, already postponed once by the conflict, can go smoothly, analysts have told Reuters.<\/p>\n
China has repeatedly urged the US and Iran to maintain the ceasefire and lift the restrictions in the strait. Trump has also credited Beijing with helping to get Iran to attend last month\u2019s peace talks in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Last week, China escalated its opposition to US sanctions against Chinese oil refineries over purchases of Iranian crude. Its Ministry of Commerce ordered companies not to comply with US sanctions against five independent refiners, including the recently designated Hengli Petrochemical, invoking for the first time a law that allows Beijing to retaliate against entities enforcing sanctions that it deems unlawful.<\/p>\n
China buys more than 80 percent of Iran\u2019s shipped \u200boil, data for 2025 from analytics firm \u200bKpler showed. Iranian oil has had limited buyers due to US sanctions that are aimed at cutting off funding to Tehran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met China\u2019s \u200btop diplomat in Beijing on Wednesday, underscoring close ties between the two countries shortly before US President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to meet with Xi Jinping. Araqchi\u2019s visit, announced by state news agency Xinhua, is his first trip to China since the US-Israeli war on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97349,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97335\/revisions\/97349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}