When President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing later this March for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the official agenda will read like every other U.S.–China meeting in recent memory: tariffs, trade balances, supply chains, Taiwan.
The real story walking through the door with him will be Iran.
On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, a sweeping joint campaign targeting Iran’s military, nuclear and command infrastructure. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes — a seismic blow to a regime that had terrorized the region for nearly five decades. Within days, his son Mojtaba was elevated as successor, a dynastic transfer inside a theocracy that once claimed to reject hereditary rule.
The war grinds on — and its consequences are landing on Beijing harder than Xi Jinping ever planned.
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Both Moscow and Beijing are actively helping Iran fight this war. That needs to be said plainly, because the administration’s public messaging has been too cautious on this point.
Multiple U.S. officials have confirmed that Russia has been sharing satellite and targeting intelligence with Tehran — including the locations of American warships and aircraft across the Middle East. That information has a cost. Seven U.S. service members have now been killed in Iranian attacks. Iran’s own ISR capability has been largely degraded by our strikes. The precision of the missile and drone attacks that have gotten through owes something to Moscow’s overhead constellation.
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Retired four-star Gen. David Petraeus told Fox News that Russian intelligence support likely explains “some of the accuracy of the missiles and drone strikes.” He called on Trump to push South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions legislation, which has more than 90 senators behind it. Iran’s own foreign minister did not deny the arrangement, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Iran-Russia military partnership “is still there and will continue.”
An adversary coalition actively helping kill American troops deserves discussion at the table in Beijing.
China’s role is less direct, but no less consequential.
For years, U.S. officials have warned that Chinese firms have funneled technology into Iran’s missile and weapons programs. The Treasury Department has sanctioned Chinese companies repeatedly for supplying missile-related materials to Tehran.
Analysts have also flagged Iran’s interest in the Chinese CM-302 supersonic anti-ship cruise missile — a weapon designed to threaten major naval vessels — which has surfaced in Iranian procurement discussions. Chinese technology already runs through portions of Iran’s missile infrastructure, from electronics to propellant components.
Denial and innocence are not the same thing.
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For all of Beijing’s public posturing, the Iran war is costing China real money — and Xi knows it.
China built its manufacturing economy on reliable access to cheap energy, including deeply discounted crude from sanctioned states. Iran has been a critical piece of that equation. According to data from Kpler analytics and other tracking firms, China was importing approximately 1.38 million barrels per day of Iranian crude in 2025 — roughly 13% of its total seaborne oil imports, with nearly all of it routed through shadowy intermediaries to evade U.S. sanctions.
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That flow now runs directly through a war zone. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil passes, sits at the center of the conflict. As of this writing, the strait is effectively closed to tanker traffic. For Beijing, that means rising energy costs, supply chain disruption and the loss of one of its most important discounted suppliers — all at once.
Compounding the pressure on Beijing is Washington’s intensifying crackdown on the “shadow fleet” — the network of obscurely flagged tankers used to move sanctioned Iranian and Russian crude into Chinese refineries. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned dozens of shipping companies, vessels and intermediaries tied to Iranian oil smuggling. Much of that crude terminates in China.
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If sanctions enforcement continues tightening — and there is every reason to press harder right now — the gray market that has allowed Beijing to secure cheap energy from sanctioned regimes will shrink. The bill for China’s energy dependency will come due.
Xi publicly condemns the war. Privately, Chinese energy firms have been pressing Tehran not to strike Qatari liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities — because China sources roughly 28% of its LNG from Qatar. Defending Iran on the world stage while quietly begging it not to torch your fuel supply is not a position of strength.
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Xi cannot replace discounted Iranian oil overnight. He cannot rehabilitate a dead supreme leader. And he cannot absorb a prolonged energy shock while his GDP growth target sits at a humbling 4.5% — China’s lowest target in over three decades. Every one of those pressures is leverage Trump should use. This is not the time for diplomatic niceties.
The Beijing summit is not a trade negotiation. It is a strategic confrontation, and Trump should walk in knowing exactly what he wants.
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First, Xi must use his documented leverage over Moscow to halt Russian intelligence support for Iranian attacks on American forces. Gen. Petraeus is right that sanctions on Russia are long overdue. But China’s economic exposure to this war gives Washington a second lever — and Trump should pull it simultaneously.
Second, China must shut down the missile technology pipeline to Tehran. Treasury Secretary Bessent is already weighing pressing Beijing on sanctioned oil purchases in his pre-summit talks with Vice Premier He Lifeng in Paris. That pressure must extend explicitly to weapons transfers — the CM-302 deal, propellant shipments, dual-use components. Washington is tracking all of it.
Third, Beijing’s rare earth export restrictions — imposed in retaliation for U.S. tariffs and designed to complicate American weapons replenishment — need to be called what they are: economic warfare. The tightening energy markets created by this conflict give Washington leverage it has not held in years. Expanded U.S. LNG exports and Gulf energy cooperation are available — but only for real concessions, not diplomatic theater.
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For years, Beijing methodically cultivated an authoritarian axis with Iran, Russia and Venezuela as a hedge against American power. Iran is now destabilized. Venezuela is out of Beijing’s orbit. Russia is exposed. The axis that gathered in Beijing last September brimming with confidence looks considerably more fragile today.
Xi will arrive at this summit hoping to stabilize the relationship and project strength on his own soil. Trump should arrive knowing that the Iran war has handed Washington something genuinely rare in the long history of U.S.–China diplomacy.
Leverage.
The card is in Washington’s hand. The question is whether Trump plays it.
