Iran and China Plot Strategy Ahead of President Trump’s Visit to Beijing

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi is seeking to steal a march on President Trump’s summit next week with Communist China’s president, Xi Jinping, by meeting his counterpart in Beijing in a bid for Chinese support in Iran’s ongoing war against the U.S. and Israel.Chinese, Iranian, and western reports all had the two foreign ministers repeating in Beijing all they’ve said before about the need to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. The meeting, though, underlined Beijing’s sympathy for Iran against America and Israel. The question after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi received the Iranian delegation was how much substantive support China is offering Iran while putting on a show of peacemaker.“China’s approach is opportunistic,” said an analysis by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “Beijing seeks to preserve Iran as a useful anti-American partner.” Washington, meanwhile, is appealing to the Chinese to read the riot act to Mr. Araghchi.“I hope the Chinese tell him what he needs to be told,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Washington. “That is, that what you are doing in the straits is causing you to be globally isolated, you’re the bad guy in this, you guys should not be blowing up ships, you should not be putting mines, you should not be … trying to hold hostage the global economy.”Mr. Rubio’s argument was basic. “China is an export-driven economy, okay?” he said. “That means they depend on other countries to buy from them. Well, you can’t buy from them if you can’t ship it there, and you can’t buy from them if your economy is being destroyed by what Iran is doing. So it is … in China’s interest that Iran stop closing the straits. It’s harming China as well.”A report by the Atlantic Council in Washington advised optimists to stop kidding themselves. Iran can also count on advice and support from North Korea, responsible for aiding and abetting Iranian success in building drones and missiles. North Korean shipments to Iran stopped during The Twelve-Day War in June when American B2 bombers and Tomahawk missiles knocked out much of Iran’s nuclear program, but North Korea soon resumed shipments of weaponry to Iran.“Take a look at the boats Iran is using,” said author Bruce Bechtol, an expert on North Korea’s armed forces. “A great many of them look like (because they are) the craft that the North Koreans sold to them and then built a factory for them, so that they could target shipping in the region.”For now, “the Iranian ports are blocked,” Mr. Bechtol noted. “Any ship suspected of arms proliferation is subject to search.” “One thing is for sure,” he told The Sun. “If the current government or some iteration of it remains in charge in Iran after the war ends, the arms shipments will pick right up. That is exactly what happened after the conclusion of the ‘twelve-day war.’”

Iran and China Plot Strategy Ahead of President Trump’s Visit to Beijing

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