(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
May 14 – U.S. President Donald Trump discussed the\u00a0Iran war<\/a>\u00a0with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, while new attacks on \u200bvessels near the Strait of Hormuz brought a reminder of the costs of a prolonged stalemate, with peace talks stalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Trump and Xi met<\/a>, a White House official said the leaders \u200chad agreed that the strait should be open, and that Iran should never obtain nuclear weapons. China is close to Iran and the main buyer of its oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an interview with CNBC in Beijing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he believed China would “do what they can” to help open the strait, which he said was “very much in their interest”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But diplomacy to end the war has been on hold since last week when Iran and the United States each rejected the other’s latest proposals, \u200bsticking to initial demands that each considers to be “red lines”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran has largely shut the Strait of Hormuz to ships apart from its own since the United States and Israel launched their bombing \u200bcampaign two-and-a-half months ago, causing the biggest ever disruption to global energy supplies. The U.S. paused the bombing last month but added a blockade of Iran’s \u2060ports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the latest incident on the trade route, an Indian cargo vessel carrying livestock from Africa to the United Arab Emirates was sunk on Thursday in waters off the coast of Oman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India condemned the attack and \u200bsaid all 14 crew members had been rescued by the Omani coastguard. Vanguard, a British maritime security advisory firm, said the vessel had been hit by a missile or drone which caused an explosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Separately, British maritime \u200bsecurity agency UKMTO reported on Thursday that “unauthorised personnel” had boarded a ship anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah, and were steering it towards Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Security in that area is particularly sensitive, as Fujairah is the UAE’s sole oil port on the far side of the strait, allowing some exports to reach markets without passing through it. Iran included that part of the coast on an expanded map it released last week of waters it claimed were under its \u200bcontrol.00:0000:43<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Iran appears to be making more deals with countries to allow some ships to pass through the strait – if they accept Tehran’s terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Japanese<\/a> tanker crossed on Wednesday after Japan’s prime minister announced that she had \u200brequested help from the Iranian president. A huge Chinese tanker<\/a> also crossed on Wednesday, and Iran’s Fars news agency reported on Thursday that an agreement had been reached to let some Chinese ships pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said 30 vessels had \u200ccrossed the strait \u2060since Wednesday evening, still far short of some 140 that typically crossed daily before the war, but a substantial increase if confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran’s Judiciary Spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Thursday the seizure of “U.S. tankers” violating Iranian regulations was being carried out under domestic and international law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Reuters) May 14 – U.S. President Donald Trump discussed the\u00a0Iran war\u00a0with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, while new attacks on \u200bvessels near the Strait of Hormuz brought a reminder of the costs of a prolonged stalemate, with peace talks stalled. After Trump and Xi met, a White House official said the leaders \u200chad agreed that the strait should be open, and that Iran should never obtain nuclear weapons. China is close to Iran and the main buyer of its oil. In an interview with CNBC in Beijing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he believed China would “do… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57610,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57608\/revisions\/57610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}