“This is not how President Trump wanted to arrive in China,” the New York Times reports.
“When he delayed his long-awaited trip to Beijing by six weeks, Mr. Trump was betting he would arrive in Beijing this week having forced the Iranians to capitulate to his demands. He anticipated that by now the shattered Iranian leadership would have agreed to turn over its nuclear stockpile, forgo its atomic ambitions and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The message to President Xi Jinping would have been clear: Chinese declarations of a superpower in decline were premature.”
“Instead, Mr. Trump will arrive on Wednesday with many in China wondering how he got bogged down by a far lesser power in a war he started. Iran’s nuclear stockpile is exactly where it was, still under the rubble of an American bombing raid last June. The Strait of Hormuz, through which China gets more than 30 percent of its oil and a bit less of its natural gas, remains closed, with no obvious plan to pry it open again.”
“And Mr. Trump looks, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said two weeks ago, ‘humiliated’ by a smaller power, having entered the conflict ‘with no truly convincing strategy.’”
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