DUBAI: US President Donald Trump said his patience with Iran was running out after he discussed the costly and unpopular war with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday and a ship was reported seized by Iranian personnel off the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
The White House said \u200bTrump and Xi had agreed during talks in Beijing on the need to keep the Strait of Hormuz shipping lane open. Iran effectively shut the waterway in response to US-Israeli attacks which began on February 28, causing an unprecedented disruption to global energy supplies. China is close to Iran and the main buyer of its oil.<\/p>\n
The US paused its attacks on Iran last month but began a blockade of the country\u2019s ports. Talks aimed at ending the conflict have stalled with Iran refusing to end its nuclear program or relinquish its stockpile of enriched uranium.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not going to be much more patient,\u201d Trump said in an interview aired on Thursday night on Fox News\u2019 \u201cHannity\u201d program. \u201cThey should make a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the key issue of Iran\u2019s hidden stockpile of enriched uranium, Trump suggested it only needed to be secured by the US for public relations purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary except from a public relations standpoint,\u201d Trump said in the interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel better if I got it, actually. But it\u2019s, I think, it\u2019s more for public relations than it is for \u200canything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the latest \u200cincidents on the trade route, an Indian cargo vessel carrying livestock from Africa to the UAE was sunk on Wednesday \u200bin \u200cwaters off \u2060the coast \u200bof \u2060Oman.<\/p>\n
India condemned the attack and said all 14 crew members had been rescued by the Omani coast guard. Vanguard, a British maritime security advisory firm, said the vessel was believed to have been hit by a missile or drone which caused an explosion. Separately, British maritime security agency UKMTO reported on Thursday that \u201cunauthorized personnel\u201d had boarded a ship anchored off the coast of the UAE port of Fujairah, and were steering it toward Iran.<\/p>\n
Vanguard said a company security officer had reported that \u201cthe vessel was taken by Iranian personnel while at anchor.\u201d After talks between Trump and Xi on Thursday, the White House said the leaders had agreed that the strait should be open and that Xi made clear China\u2019s opposition to the militarization of the strait and any effort to charge a toll for its use.<\/p>\n
Trump said Xi also promised not to send Iran military equipment. \u201cHe said he\u2019s not going to give military equipment, that\u2019s a big statement,\u201d Trump said \u2060on \u201cHannity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Xi also expressed interest in purchasing more American oil to reduce China\u2019s future dependence on the strait and the leaders agreed that \u200cIran should never obtain nuclear weapons, the White House readout said. Tehran has denied seeking such weapons.<\/p>\n
DIPLOMACY ON HOLD Trump \u200cis keen to elicit Chinese support to end a war that has become an electoral liability as it \u200bdrags on toward key US midterm elections in November. But analysts doubt Xi will \u200cbe willing to push Iran hard or end support for its military, given its value as a strategic counterweight to the US<\/p>\n
In an interview with CNBC from Beijing, \u200cUS Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he believed China would \u201cdo what they can\u201d to help open the strait, something \u201cvery much in their interest.\u201d Before the war, about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies passed through the waterway.<\/p>\n
But diplomacy has been on hold since last week when Iran and the US each rejected the other\u2019s most recent proposals.<\/p>\n
Fujairah is the UAE\u2019s sole oil port, on the Gulf of Oman just outside the Strait of Hormuz, and enables some shipments to reach markets without passing through the chokepoint.<\/p>\n
Iran appears to be making more deals with countries to allow some \u200cships to pass through the strait \u2014 if they accept Tehran\u2019s terms. A Japanese tanker crossed on Wednesday after Japan\u2019s prime minister announced that she had requested help from the Iranian president. A huge Chinese tanker also crossed on Wednesday, and Iran\u2019s Fars news \u2060agency reported on Thursday that an agreement had \u2060been reached to let some Chinese ships pass.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards said 30 vessels had passed through the strait since Wednesday evening, still far short of the 140 on a typical day before the war, but a substantial increase if confirmed.<\/p>\n
According to shipping analytics firm Kpler, some 10 ships had sailed through the strait in the past 24 hours, against five to seven that have crossed daily in recent weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DUBAI: US President Donald Trump said his patience with Iran was running out after he discussed the costly and unpopular war with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday and a ship was reported seized by Iranian personnel off the United Arab Emirates. The White House said \u200bTrump and Xi had agreed during talks in Beijing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97779","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\/97779","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=97779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97799,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97779\/revisions\/97799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}