Xi and Trump face off over Iran war? | DW News

0:00 The fighting in the Middle East, specifically the war in Iran,

0:03 is promising to overshadow a highstakes meeting between US President Donald

0:08 Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this week in Beijing.

0:13 It's the first time a US president will be visiting China in close to a decade.

0:18 The White House has said it is of tremendous symbolic significance

0:22 and promised that Donald Trump will deliver more good deals for Americans.

0:27 But Trump also hopes to get China to use its

0:30 leverage over Iran to push for concessions and peace talks.

0:35 When the two last came face to face during a brief

0:38 meeting on the sidelines of an Apex summit in Busousan last year,

0:42 the emphasis was on stabilizing strain ties.

0:45 This time the agenda is much heavier.

0:48 Trade, technology, Taiwan, and the global security climate will all loom large,

0:54 making the meeting an important test of how

0:57 Washington and Beijing can manage their rivalry going forward.

1:03 Journalist and Middle East analyst Gordon Robinson joins me now.

1:06 Gordon, welcome back to DW.

1:07 Now, the last time a US president visited China was almost a decade ago.

1:12 It was the same president as the one is going now, Donald Trump.

1:15 The mood was a little different back then, wasn't it?

1:18 How is this visit different to the one back in 2017?

1:22 Well, US China summits are always somewhat somewhat fraught.

1:25 They're always very high stakes,

1:27 kind of the way US Soviet summits were a generation or two ago.

1:31 Uh the Chinese are very angry about Trump's trade policies.

1:35 And of course, the war in the Middle East,

1:38 even though it's a long way from either China or the US,

1:41 is factoring into all of this.

1:43 Uh the United States believes that China could be helpful and has not been.

1:49 Uh the Chinese have uh are very concerned

1:53 that the US not get their ships involved in the war.

1:57 A lot of China's oil passes through the straight of Hormuz.

2:00 And it it's obviously a priority for China that that not get messed with.

2:05 Neither vessels flagged as Chinese or vessels that aren't

2:10 strictly speaking Chinese but are headed for China.

2:12 So there there are a lot of moving parts as is always the case.

2:16 Yeah, there are a lot of potential topics on the table though, right?

2:19 We have trade, we have tech, we have Taiwan.

2:22 To what extent do you expect Iran to overshadow all of this?

2:26 Is this going to be a summit ultimately about Iran?

2:30 Uh well, I am not a China expert, so I I I may I may punt on that, but it

2:34 but you one can certainly say that Iran will be part of this.

2:39 uh both because the US thinks that the Chinese could be more helpful,

2:43 but also it it gets even more complicated.

2:46 If you look at the Gulf States in as recently

2:49 as three months ago before the war began,

2:51 it was conventional wisdom out in the Gulf that the Gulf States were edging away

2:56 from the United States and and downgrading their relationship

2:59 with the US and getting closer to China.

3:04 That's really completely reversed just in in these couple of months.

3:08 Is that so?

3:09 Because the US did not really talk to their Gulf allies before the war started.

3:15 They didn't consult them.

3:17 They didn't really jump to their defense when

3:20 then Iran started retaliating attacking targets in the Gulf.

3:25 They must consider the US a very unreliable partner.

3:28 So that is all true, but you just phrased it very well.

3:31 They consider the US a very unreliable partner.

3:34 But I think it's also been driven home

3:36 to them that if China were their primary partner,

3:40 China's not going to help them out at all.

3:42 China is not going to sell them weapons to help protect them against Iran.

3:46 China is not going to replace the weapons

3:49 that they have fired off over the last two months.

3:52 What I think has been reinforced in places like Dubai and Riyad

3:56 and Kuwait and Doha is that the Americans may be unreliable,

4:00 but an unreliable partner is better than a partner

4:04 that doesn't see supporting you militarily as its problem at all.

4:09 China buys most of the Iranian oil.

4:12 How important a partner is China for Iran

4:16 at this stage where it is under attack?

4:19 Now we have a ceasefire of course, but how how crucial has this alliance

4:23 of sorts been for Iran throughout this war?

4:25 It is it is enormously important for the Iranians.

4:28 Obviously, China is enormously bigger than Iran.

4:32 So, put another way, China is more important to Iran than Iran is to China.

4:38 A lot of Chinese oil comes through the Gulf,

4:40 but the Chinese have other sources of oil.

4:42 For the Iranians, the Chinese are their primary customer

4:47 for whom the American and other Western sanctions don't matter.

4:52 China is one of the few big customers of Iranian

4:54 oil that is big enough to ignore the American sanctions.

4:58 And also, uh, the Americans are not going to mess with Chinese flagged vessels.

5:03 They're just they're just not um because

5:05 that would cause so many other problems.

5:08 So yes, China's economic support and its

5:12 intelligence or uh uh political support is hugely

5:18 important to Iran and there's no way

5:20 that doesn't somehow get discussed during this meeting.

5:23 The Iranian foreign minister traveled to China just last week.

5:27 Um well that's that's a sign of what we've been talking about.

5:30 Exactly.

5:30 To what extent do you think they were trying to massage

5:33 leadership in Beijing ahead of this this meeting between she and Trump?

5:37 maybe massage the leadership,

5:38 but a that an easier way of saying it was would simply be they want to make

5:42 sure that the Chinese understand what they the Iranians

5:45 priorities are when the Chinese meet with the Americans.

5:49 It's also possible, I mean, the Pakistanis have been the most the most

5:52 prominent interlocutor between the Americans and the Iranians,

5:55 but the Chinese could in theory be well positioned to play that role as well,

6:01 should they wish to.

6:02 I've got no idea whether they do, but they are, you know,

6:05 a substantial and important country that has relations with both sides.

6:10 So, it may be that the Iranians want to get the Chinese somehow involved.

6:14 Yeah.

6:15 What does Donald Trump want out of this meeting

6:17 when it comes to the war in Iran?

6:21 He wants Chinese help.

6:22 I think the big question, and we won't really know till the summit's over,

6:25 is does he know what he means by Chinese help?

6:29 I mean, I I I don't want to sound uh ungenerous of spirit,

6:33 but I think part of the problem throughout these last two months

6:37 has been that President Trump sends mixed messages to friends and foes alike.

6:43 So, you know, what exactly does he want from the Chinese?

6:46 I think the first question is, does he even know what he wants from the Chinese?

6:50 And is he aware of how whatever that is affects all the other things?

6:56 It's it's a it's a jigsaw puzzle.

6:58 I'm going to mix my metaphors.

6:59 It's a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of moving parts.

7:02 And with all due respect to the Trump administration,

7:05 the Trump administration has not so far demonstrated that it's good at looking

7:11 at the big picture rather than looking at each individual moving part by itself.

7:17 It's it's widely believed that Beijing did push Iran to continue

7:23 these these talks about ceasefires about a possible peace deal with the US.

7:29 Now, Scott Besson, the head of the US Treasury,

7:31 said that the Chinese should keep up the diplomacy or step up the diplomacy.

7:36 You are very well-versed when it comes to to the Middle

7:40 East and certainly when it comes to Iran.

7:42 Has outside pressure ever worked on Iran?

7:45 Um, publicly, no.

7:47 Privately, yes.

7:48 I mean, I think when you look at Iran over the last two generations,

7:53 one thing you see is that the the Iranians

7:55 often talk as though they are an irrational actor,

7:58 but they act fairly rationally.

8:01 Not always, I will I will grant.

8:03 But the but the Iranians uh do not always act

8:07 in ways that that would be indicated by their public statements.

8:11 Uh there have been a lot of uh a lot of hints in the last few

8:16 weeks that there is more going on behind

8:18 the scenes than we are aware of publicly.

8:21 I think first of all for the sake of peace we all have to hope that's the case.

8:25 And perhaps what Secretary Bessant was saying is that China has

8:29 been involved in that and he wants them to be more involved.

8:32 And again, the Iranians would probably see the Chinese as an interlocutor.

8:36 They would they would be comfortable dealing with.

8:39 For all intents and purposes, the war in Iran is not going great for the US.

8:44 To what extent do you think that has

8:45 shifted the balance of power going into this meeting?

8:50 Well, I think we've been in a situation for several

8:52 weeks where both the Americans and the Iranians want a solution,

8:56 but they have different time frames.

8:57 The Trump wants a solution now.

8:59 He, you know, he he got himself into this mess.

9:02 He wants to get out of it and he wants to get out of it quickly and cleanly.

9:05 The Iranians would like it to end

9:07 and economically it's really beginning to bite in Iran.

9:10 We've seen that just in the last couple of weeks.

9:12 But they are willing to wait.

9:15 They they have a longer timeline.

9:17 They're willing to show more patience.

9:20 And that's one of the things that I think may slow things down.

9:24 that, you know, one side wants a quick deal, the other side is willing to wait.

9:29 Both sides want to be seen to win out of whatever the final deal is.

9:33 We saw that just over the weekend

9:35 with the Iranian proposal that President Trump rejected.

9:39 I mean, you know, the Iranians own account of the proposal.

9:43 The United States is never going to pay reparations to Iran.

9:46 We can have a separate philosophical discussion about whether it should,

9:49 but it's simply not going to happen.

9:52 um you know thing there were things

9:54 on the list uh that the Iranians know are non-starters.

9:58 So the question is you know are they willing to move beyond that?

10:01 Uh I think like most diplomatic problems

10:04 it is probably solvable but I'm less confident

10:08 than I was a week ago that we might be nearing some longer term solution.

10:13 Yeah, Donald Trump, I think we both know it.

10:16 He's going to come out of this summit claiming victory of some sort,

10:20 saying this was great.

10:22 He got what he wanted.

10:23 Huge and historic and something that's never been done before.

10:27 Yeah, we've been here before.

10:29 Um, what are you going to be looking for to determine

10:32 whether or not this really went his way or whether or not,

10:37 you know, the Chinese can actually claim that this went

10:39 their way and they got more out of it than they expected?

10:41 Well, I think what we have to hope

10:43 for is some sort of a win-win where the Chinese,

10:45 the Iranians, the Americans, and the Israelis all get what they expect.

10:48 I don't know exactly what that would look like, but again,

10:51 I try to be optimistic and think that there's probably a way to get there.

10:55 I think what we have to watch is

10:57 not what people say immediately after the summit

10:59 but what happens on the ground in the water uh in the in the days

11:04 and weeks immediately after the summit because I I suspect that we are

11:09 not going to get some big announcement of a uh uh of an agreement.

11:14 Um though it is conceivable that we could get some sort

11:16 of an announcement that the two sides are going to talk again.

11:20 though one of the things the Americans I think learned

11:22 from the uh failed talks in Pakistan several weeks ago is

11:27 that you shouldn't send your highest level envoys into a situation

11:30 where there isn't an agreement basically ready to wrap up.

11:34 Uh hopefully one of the things the Trump administration has

11:37 learned from this is you need to do the nuts

11:39 and bolts negotiating at a lower level and bring

11:42 the big uh the big people in to finish things off.

11:46 Gordon Robinson, always great to have you on the show.

11:47 Thank you so much.