WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday downplayed differences with President Xi Jinping over the U.S. and Israel’s conflict in Iran as he headed to Beijing for a high-stakes summit with the Chinese leader.Trump has been unsuccessfully pressing Xi to use China’s considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to U.S. terms to end the more than 2-month-old war — or, at the very least, reopen the Strait of Hormuz.But just before he left the White House on Tuesday for his flight to Beijing, Trump sought to downplay differences with Xi over Iran and the shadow the conflict is casting on global oil markets.“We’re going to have a long talk about it. I think he’s been relatively good, to be honest with you,” Trump said of his plans to discuss the conflict with Xi. Minutes later, he added, “We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control.”
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But Trump over the course of the conflict has veered between venting that China, the world’s biggest buyer of Iranian oil, hasn’t done more to get the Islamic Republic in line and acknowledging that Xi’s government helped de-escalate the conflict last month by nudging Tehran back to ceasefire talks when negotiations wobbled.
