As Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi travels to Washington for her first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump stateside, the Iran conflict will loom large over their meeting.
The Japanese PM’s meeting with Trump on Thursday will be her first after she led the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to victory in February, its largest electoral win since World War II.
Stephen Nagy, professor of politics and international studies at Tokyo’s International Christian University (ICU) told CNBC over email that “Takaichi will do what all Japanese PMs do, reaffirm that the Japan-U.S. alliance is the cornerstone of Japan’s security but also to the peace and stability of the free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
But the topic of Iran is likely to dominate the meeting, experts told CNBC.
Before the conflict with Tehran started on Feb. 28, Takaichi’s meeting was expected to focus on Japan’s investment in the U.S., increasing defence spending, and to talk about the now-postponed summit between Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping. That’s according to Jeffery Hornung, Japan Lead for the National Security Research Division at RAND, a U.S. based think-tank.
