Politico: Biden to press Xi on Iran in APEC meeting next week

President Joe Biden’s concerns about the Israel-Hamas war will spill over into his long-awaited face-to-face meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of APEC on November 15.

When the two leaders meet at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay area, Biden will urge Xi to use his influence with Tehran to prevent Iran and its proxies from exploiting the Israel-Hamas war to sow a wider regional conflict, Politico reports.

Biden “will underscore our desire for China to make clear in its burgeoning relationship with Iran that it is essential that Iran not seek to escalate or spread violence in the Middle East,” a senior administration official told reporters on Thursday. Any “provocative actions” by Iran will spark a prompt U.S. response, the official said.

Biden’s willingness to add Iran to an already packed meeting agenda with Xi underscores the administration’s concern that Iran’s Lebanon-based militant ally Hezbollah might respond to Hamas’s calls for the group to open a second “resistance” front against Israel. China and Iran have a strategic partnership fueled by mutual antipathy toward the U.S. that Beijing underwrites with oil purchases and investment.

China’s ties to Iran will be part of the “tough conversations” between Biden and Xi that will touch on all key issues of the U.S.-China relations, a second senior administration official said. They’ll include discussions on climate cooperation, China’s role in the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic and Beijing’s alignment with Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The two leaders will also exchange talking points on perennial hot-button issues including human rights as well as rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. One fraught issue that’s not on the agenda in any detail: discussions about the future of the Trump-era 301 tariffs on Chinese imports that Biden has refused to withdraw.

Beijing, for its part, won’t give details on Xi’s meeting agenda. The two leaders will discuss the “strategic, overarching and fundamental importance in shaping China-U.S. relations and major issues concerning world peace and development,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday.