On Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business that China has been buying 90 per cent of Iran's energy exports and is therefore 'funding the largest state sponsor of terrorism.' On the same day, Bessent urged China to 'step up with some diplomacy' and use its leverage over Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The United States Treasury Secretary accused China of financing terrorism in the morning and asked China for a diplomatic favour in the afternoon. Both statements were made in the same interview.
This is not a contradiction Washington is embarrassed about. It is a contradiction Washington is hoping nobody notices.
The US has spent the past three months sanctioning Chinese companies accused of purchasing Iranian oil. Beijing responded by instructing Chinese companies not to comply with the sanctions. China and Russia then vetoed the US-backed resolution at the United Nations Security Council aimed at condemning Iran's actions in the Strait of Hormuz. Washington's position throughout has been that China's economic relationship with Iran is a problem requiring punitive action. That position is now being quietly set aside because Washington needs the relationship it spent three months trying to destroy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was more direct about the ask. Speaking at a White House briefing, Rubio called on Chinese officials to use Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's visit to Beijing to press Tehran on the strait. 'I hope the Chinese tell him what he needs to be told,' Rubio said. Araghchi met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on Wednesday. Wang told him that a comprehensive ceasefire 'brooks no delay' and urged Washington and Tehran to reopen the strait 'as soon as possible.' China's public position is neutral mediation. Its actual position is more complicated. Beijing has vetoed two Security Council resolutions, sanctioned Chinese companies were instructed to continue purchasing Iranian oil and Chinese foreign policy has consistently refused to validate Washington's framing of the war as a counter-terrorism operation.
The timing of all of this is not accidental. Trump is due to meet President Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 14 and 15 — the first visit by an American president to China since Trump's first term. Bessent said Iran would be high on the agenda. The summit gives Washington a formal channel to ask Beijing to deliver what American military force has so far failed to deliver — a reopened strait and a negotiated end to the war. The irony is structural. Washington launched a war that has closed the world's most important oil chokepoint. It cannot reopen that chokepoint by force. It cannot reach a negotiated settlement without going through Pakistan. And now it cannot apply sufficient diplomatic pressure on Tehran without asking the country it accused of funding terrorism to do the diplomatic work America's own sanctions made impossible.
China imports approximately half its crude oil and nearly a third of its liquefied natural gas from the Middle East. Rubio's argument — that it is therefore in China's interest to help reopen the strait — is correct as far as it goes. China is losing as much as anyone from the closure. But the argument elides a more fundamental point. China's leverage over Iran exists precisely because of the economic relationship Washington spent three months trying to punish. You cannot sanction a relationship into weakness and then ask it to perform on your behalf.
The Yemen Press Agency identified the core paradox accurately: Washington has combined military escalation with diplomatic appeals to the country it has declared its primary adversary. Project Freedom — the US Navy's escort operation through the strait — was announced on May 4 and paused on May 6 because of 'great progress' toward a possible agreement. The aircraft carrier and the diplomatic phone call are being deployed simultaneously toward the same objective. One is not working. The other depends on Beijing's goodwill, which Washington has spent considerable effort eroding.
China's answer to all of this will become clear when Trump lands in Beijing on May 14. Wang Yi told Araghchi that China supports a comprehensive ceasefire. He did not say China would deliver one. The distance between those two positions is where the war currently lives.
Washington built this crisis on the premise that China's relationship with Iran was the problem. It now needs that relationship to survive the crisis it created. The sanctions were the price of a war Washington started. The diplomacy is the cost of a war Washington cannot finish.
