US president Donald Trump ‌said Chinese president Xi Jinping had agreed Tehran must reopen the Strait of Hormuz, though China gave no indication it would weigh in.Flying back from Beijing on Friday after ​two days of talks with Xi, Trump said he was considering whether to lift US sanctions on Chinese oil companies buying Iranian oil. China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil.“I’m not asking for any favours because when you ask for favours, you have to do favours in return,” Trump said when asked by a reporter on Air ​Force One whether Xi had made a firm commitment to put pressure on the Iranians to reopen the vital strait.Xi did not comment on his discussions with Trump about Iran, although ⁠China’s foreign ministry expressed frustration with the Iran war, calling it a conflict “which should never have happened, has no reason to continue”.Iran has effectively shut the strait, which carried one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supply before the US and Israel launched attacks on February 28th. The disruption to shipping has caused the biggest ⁠oil supply crisis in history, sending oil prices skyrocketing.Thousands of ​Iranians were killed during the US and Israeli air strikes, and thousands ​have been killed in Lebanon in renewed fighting there between Israel and the Iran-backed group Hizbullah.The US paused its attacks last month but began ‌a port blockade. Tehran said it would not unblock the ​strait until the US ended its blockade. Trump has threatened to resume attacks if Iran does not agree to a deal.“We don’t want ⁠them to have a nuclear weapon, we want the straits ⁠open,” Trump said in Beijing, ​alongside Xi.Iran, which has long denied that it intends to build a nuclear weapon, has refused to end nuclear research or relinquish its hidden stockpile of enriched uranium, to Trump’s frustration.Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran had received messages from the US indicating Washington was willing to continue talks.“We hope that, with the advancement of negotiations, we will reach a good conclusion so that the Strait of Hormuz can be completely secured and we can expedite the normalisation of traffic through the strait,” he told reporters in New Delhi.Iran would welcome Chinese input, Araghchi said on Friday, adding that ​Tehran was trying to give diplomacy a chance but did not trust the US, which has curtailed previous rounds of talks by launching air strikes. Trump, on an interview aired on Thursday, said he was losing patience with Iran, said Tehran “should ‌make a deal”.Talks on ‌ending the war, which has become a liability for Trump ahead of US congressional elections in November, have been on hold since last week when Iran and the US ​each rejected the other’s most recent proposals.During a huddle with reporters on the way back to the United States, Trump also said Xi told him he opposed Taiwan’s independence.“I heard him out. I didn’t make a comment ... I made no commitment either way,” said Trump. He added that he will decide on a pending arms sale to Taiwan shortly, after speaking to “the person that right now is ... running Taiwan”.It ​was unclear if Trump was referring to Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te. A direct conversation between a sitting US president and Taiwan’s leader would be unprecedented in the period since Washington shifted diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 1979, and would likely anger China, which sees the democratically governed island as its territory. – Reuters