WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will have a long talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the war in Iran during his upcoming trip to China, but added that he does not think he needs Xi’s help.
“I don’t think we need any help with Iran. We’ll win it one way or the other, peacefully or otherwise,” Trump told reporters when departing the White House for China.
The leaders of the world’s two largest economies will hold their first face-to-face talks in more than six months as they try to stabilize ties strained by trade, the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran and other areas of disagreement.
Trump is heading to China amid an unresolved Iran war with diplomatic negotiations to end it at an impasse. Beijing maintains ties with Iran and remains a major consumer of its oil exports.
Trump has been leaning on China to use its influence to push Tehran to make a deal with Washington and end the conflict that began when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February.
The Republican president is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday, ahead of talks set to take place Thursday and Friday. It will be his first trip to China since 2017.
Trump later told reporters: “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.”
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Humeyra Pamuk and Ryan Patrick Jones; editing by Michelle Nichols)
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