Iran war live: Trump travels to China as conflict with Tehran looms large

Muhammad Asghar | GlobalBeat

President Trump arrived in Beijing late Monday for emergency talks with Xi Jinping hours after Iran vowed to hit back at U.S. forces massing in the Persian Gulf.

The White House confirmed the previously unscheduled summit as satellite images showed Iran moving Shahab-3 mobile missile launchers toward its southern coast.

Tehran and Washington are now one miscalculation away their first direct shooting war since 1988, regional diplomats told reporters in Doha. Oil prices leapt 9 % overnight to $127 a barrel, the biggest spike since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Trump’s motorcade sped from Beijing Capital Airport to the Great Hall of the People under heavy Chinese security. He did not speak to waiting reporters, but a senior U.S. official travelling with him said the president would ask Xi to “choke off the oil lifeline that keeps Tehran’s war machine alive.” China still buys 1.1 million barrels a day of sanctioned Iranian crude.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard issued a blunt warning at 18:00 Washington time. “Any hostile move will meet an answer ten times harder,” spokesman Ramazan Sharif said on state television. He spoke beside a new underground ballistic-missile depot carved into a mountain south of Bandar Abbas, a deliberate signal to U.S. spy planes overhead.

The immediate flashpoint is a 48-hour U.S. air campaign that began Friday when B-2 stealth bombers struck three alleged nuclear sites near Natanz and Fordow. Washington says the raids, code-named Operation Iron Saber, were meant to pre-empt an Iranian sprint to weapons-grade uranium. Tehran calls the strikes “an act of war” and claims 19 civilians, including 7 children, were killed in a village near Natanz. The Pentagon has not released casualty figures.

Inside the region, Gulf Arab states braced for retaliation. Kuwait’s oil ports went to “essential staffing only”; Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq plant, hit by Iranian missiles in 2019, redeployed two U.S.-made Patriot batteries to its perimeter. Bahrain ordered all non-key U.S. military dependents to leave within 72 hours, a U.S. Fifth Fleet spokesman confirmed.

European capitals pleaded for restraint. “We ask all parties to hold fire,” EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters in Brussels. France activated a crisis cell for its 2,500 citizens in Iran; Germany suspended Lufthansa flights to Tehran “until further notice.” Britain’s Starmer government convened COBRA late Monday but has not ordered evacuations.

Oil markets roiled. Brent crude surged $10.81 to $127.04 by 03:30 GMT, the highest since September. Shipping insurers in London effectively closed the Persian Gulf to tankers without war-risk add-ons that now cost $400,000 per voyage, up from $50,000 last week. Analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote Monday that a full Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could send prices to $200 “within days.”

Background

Washington and Tehran have danced on the edge of open conflict since Trump quit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions. The U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign has cut Iranian oil exports by two-thirds and helped crash the rial from 32,000 to 690,000 against the dollar. Iran answered with a shadow war of mine attacks on Gulf tankers, a September 2019 missile-and-drone strike on Saudi oil facilities, and proxy rocket fire at U.S. troops in Iraq that killed three Americans in 2020.

Direct air strikes stayed off the table until last week, when the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Iran had enriched uranium to 84 %, a hair’s breadth from weapons grade. Trump, elected in 2024 on a “no new wars” platform, authorised the limited raids after what aides called a 5-hour Situation Room debate. The president’s China detour suggests he wants Xi’s help tightening the economic vice rather than widening the war.

What’s Next

Trump and Xi are expected to issue a joint statement Tuesday morning Beijing time. Diplomats say Washington will demand China cut oil purchases to 250,000 bpd within 60 days; Beijing wants a U.S. pledge to spare Iranian ports and civilian airports from future strikes. In Tehran, lawmakers will convene an emergency closed session at noon local time; the Revolutionary Guard has already sought authorisation to place the country on formal war footing. If Iran fires missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar or Bahrain, Pentagon officials say a second wave of American strikes—this time targeting command centers and possibly leadership sites—is locked and loaded.

The next 36 hours could decide whether the Middle East faces another limited exchange or a full-scale conflict that draws in Israel, Hezbollah and possibly Chinese oil interests. All sides insist they want de-escalation, yet every military move narrows the diplomatic runway. Watch the skies over the Gulf, and watch Beijing’s communique at sunrise.