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HomeMy WebLinkAboutProof of Noticing for the May 28, 2026 CC Mtgr1U0S0AY MAY 14 2026 I MIAMI:H060:0 I 3A For Trump, the Iran war looms over China summit BY NTT N Service ews BBgING Addressing Americans about Iran last month, President Donald Trump said that "the whole world is watching" the "power, strength and brilliance" of the United States. Viewed from Beijing, where Trump arrived Wednesday, the picture of the United States in its war with Iran is not quite as flattering. Beyond the pageantry, this week's China summit seems set to underscore the strategic setbacks facing Trump as he struggles for a way to end the Iran war. Trump is entering the summit with the economy at the top of his agenda. Analysts have predicted announcements about agricultural and airplane purchases by China, along with an extension of the trade war truce that Presi- dent Xi Jinping and Tromp reached last fall. The White House has said the summit will aim to refocus U.S.-China relations on "rebuilding the safety, security and prosperity of Americans." But the Iran war means that Trump has arrived in China at a weakened geo- political moment, smart- ing from a shaky ceasefire d Iran's refusal to ease energy prices by reopen- ing the Strait of Hormuz. And it adds to China's potential negotiating lev- erage, given that some analysts see Beijing as having the influence to push Iran toward a deal that would be acceptable to Trump - if Xi chooses to play ball. Evan Medeiros, a form- er senior adviser on Asia to President Barack Oba- ma, said Chinese officials were "acutely aware" that Trump's desire for an Iran peace deal presented Beij- ing with "a substantial source of leverage." "The question is, is Trump willing to pay whatever price Beijing puts on Chinese cooper- ation on the Iran issue?" Medeiros said in a briefing for reporters arranged by the Asia Group consul- tancy, where he is a senior adviser. In Beijing, commenta- tors have cast the Iran war as a confounding, un- forced error of which China can now take ad- vantage. Interviews with several foreign policy analysts in the Chinese capital Wednesday showed how the summit is turning into the biggest test yet of the extent to which the Iran war has shifted the United States' standing in the world. "You are squandering your hegemony every- where," said Sun Cheng- hao, a specialist in U.S.- China relations at Tsing- hua University in Beijing. "The U.S. is damaging its own image, its credibil- ity." The balance of power between the United States and China had shifted in Beijing's favor even before the U.S.-Israeli bombard- ment of Iran began Feb. 28. Trump was quick to start a new trade war with China after he took office last year, but he backed down when China choked off exports of rare earth metals that American carmakers and other com- panies could not do with- out. The Iran war complicat- ed matters further. Chi- na's inability to protect Iran, a close partner, from attack sowed doubt about Beijing's geopolitical clout and limited its oil imports. But it harmed the United States even more, analysts in Beijing argue, because Trump has struggled to articulate his war aims and proved unable to stop Iran from causing a global energy crisis by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the main export route for oil from the Persian Gulf. "Trump made a similar mistake as Putin made," said Da Wei, the director of Tsinghua's Center for International Security and Strategy, comparing Trump's inflated expecta- tions in bombing Iran to the bungled invasion of Ukraine by Russian Presi- dent Vladimir Patin. "When can the U.S. de- clare it won the war? I don't know what the crite- ri a is." China's relationship with Russia is much closer than its ties to Iran, in part because of Putin's role in helping Xi push back against a Western -led world order. China has enabled Russia's war on Ukraine by buying energy exports from Russia and selling it key electronics. And China has resisted Westem entreaties to pressure Russia to end its invasion. For Xi, who has long sought to cement China's role as a leading global power, the Iran war has presented a new opportu- nity to present his country as a responsible player. Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, hosted his Ira - an counterpart in Beijing last week and called for a "comprehensive cessation of hostilities." But some analysts say that China is not yet exert- ing all the leverage it has over Iran, which relies on China as the buyer of almost all its oil exports. That is where Taiwan comes in - perhaps the most uncertain of the summit's agenda items. Henry Huiyao Wang, the president of the Cen- ter for China and Global- ization think tank, said China could do more to help Trump secure a peace deal with Iran if the U.S. president declared that he opposed the independence of Taiwan. The official position of the United States is that it "does not support" Taiwan's inde- pendence, a rhetorical nuance that has long irked Beijing. "Can they send this message a little stronger?" said Wang, a former Chi- nese government official. "I think that can be done if they expect China to do more." If China is to give an "extra push" to clinch an Iran deal, Wang added, "it certainly needs more encouragement from the Medeiros described China's relationship with Iran as primarily trans- actional in nature, mean- ing that it could figure into the broader negotiations at the summit. "Some interesting trade space could open up be- tween what Trump wants from China on Iran, and what Beijing wants from the United States on Tai- wa n," Medeiros said. The White House has dismissed talk that Trump might be persuaded by Xi to be more explicit in opposing Taiwanese inde- pendence. And other ana- lysts were skeptical that China would be willing to exert much more pressure on Iran than it already has, especially given the sensitivities of being seen as selling out a partner to benefit the United States. "For China, the cost will be very huge if we aban- don Iran," Sun said. "It will cause a lot of cascad- ing effects to the other so-called strategic part- ners of China." But the view of a U.S. president on the defen- sive, battling discontent with the war even within his political base and fac- ing difficult midterm elec- tions, was widely shared. "He's really tried all his means to stop this war," Wang said, adding: "Now he's stuck, and he wants to get out, and the mid- terms are coming." FROM PAGE 1A IRAN stored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten U.S. war- ships and oil tankers tran- siting the narrow water- way. People with knowledge of the assessments said they show — to varying degrees, depending on the level of damage incurred at the different sites — that the Iranians can use mobile launchers that are inside the sites to move missiles to other locations. In some cases they can launch missiles directly from launchpads that are part of the facilities. Only three of the missile sites along the strait remain totally inaccessible, ac- cording to the assess- ments. Iran still fields about 70% of its mobile launch- ers across the country and has retained roughly 70% of its prewar missile stock- pile, according to the as- sessments. That stockpile encompasses both ballistic missiles, which can target other nations in the re- gion, and a smaller supply of cruise missiles, which an be used against short- er -range targets on land or at sea. Military intelligence agencies have also report- ed, based on information from multiple collection streams including satellite imagery and other surveil- lance technologies, that Iran has regained access to roughly 90% of its underground missile stor- age and launch facilities nationwide, which are now assessed to be "par- tially or fully operational," the people with knowledge of the assessments said. The findings undercut months of public assur- ances from President Donald Trump and De- fense Secretary Pete Heg- seth, who have told Amer- icans that the Iranian military was "decimated" and "no longer" a threat On March 9,10 days into the war, Trump told CBS News that Iran's missiles are down to a scatter" and that the coun- try had "nothing left in a military sense." Hegseth declared at a Pentagon news conference on April 8 that Operation Epic Fury - the joint U.S.-Israel cam- paign launched on Feb. 28 - had "decimated Iran's military and rendered it combat -ineffective for years to come." The intelligence de- scribing Iran's remaining military capacity is dated less than a month after that news conference. Asked about the in- telligence assessments, a White House spokes- person, Olivia Wales, repeated Trump's pre- vious assertions that Iran's military had been crushed." She said that Iran's government knows that its "current reality is not sustainable" and that anyone who "thinks Iran has reconstituted its mil- itary is either delusional or a mouthpiece" for Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Wales pointed to a so- cial media post from Trump on Tuesday declar- ing that it was "virtual treason" to suggest that Iran's military was doing well. Joel Valdez, the acting Pentagon press secretary, responded to questions about the intelligence by criticizing news coverage of the war. "It is so dis- graceful that The New York Times and others are acting as public relations agents for the Iranian regime in order to paint Operation Epic Fury as anything other than a historic accomplishment," he said in a statement. The new intelligence assessments suggest that Trump and his military advisers overestimated the damage that the U.S. mil- itary could inflict on Ira- nian sites, and underestimated Iran's resilience and ability to bounce back. The New York Times reported last month that U.S. officials believed that Iran could regain as much as 70% of its prewar missile arsenal. The Washington Post reported last week on U.S. intelligence showing that Iran retained about 75% of its mobile missile launch- ers and about 70% of its prewar missile stockpile. The findings underscore the dilemma Tromp would face if the fragile month - old ceasefire in the con- flict collapses and full- scale fighting resumes. The U.S. military has al- ready depleted its stocks of many critical muni- tions, including Toma- hawk cruise missiles, Pa- triot interceptor missiles, and Precision Strike and ATACMS ground -based missiles, and yet the in- telligence suggests that Iran retains considerable military capability, in- cluding around the vital Strait of Hormuz. The passageway carries ughly one -fifth of the world's daily oil consump- tion, and the U.S. Navy now maintains anear- continuous presence tran- siting and patrolling it The US. military's Central Command said in a social media post on Sunday that more than 20 U.S. war- ships were enforcing the blockade against Iran. If Trump ordered com- manders to launch more strikes to take out or di- minish those Iranian capa- bilities, then the U.S. mil- itary would have to dig even deeper into stocks of critical munitions. Doing so would further undercut U.S. stockpiles at a time when the Pentagon and the major arms makers are already struggling to find the industrial capacity to replenish U.S. reserves. Trump and his advisers have repeatedly denied that U.S. munitions stocks have been drained to dangerously low levels. In private, Pentagon officials have offered similar assur- ances to anxious European allies. Those allies have purchased billions of dol- lars of munitions from the United States on behalf of Ukraine, and they are concerned that those mu- nitions will not be deliver- ed because the U.S. mil- itary will need them to replenish its own stocks - a worry that would only intensify if the president orders a retum to hostil- ities with Iran. In testimony on Tues- day to a House appropri- ations subcommittee, Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "We have suffuient unitions for what we're tasked to do right now." The joint assault on Iran by the United States and Israel inflicted consid- erable damage on Iran's defenses and damaged or destroyed many strategic sites around the country. Many of Iran's senior leaders have been killed, and its economy is stag- gering under the pressures of the war, leaving ques- tions about how long it can sustain its hard line on negotiated end to the conflict and the halt on nearly all oil tanker traffic and other shipping through the Strait of Hor- muz. But Iran's apparent ability to retain substantial military capacity has exa- cerbated concerns among U.S. allies about the wis- dom of the war and gener- ated criticism among Trump's anti -intervention- ist supporters who op- posed getting into the conflict in the fast place. As the Times previously reported, the United States expended roughly 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles in the war - close to the total supply that remains in the Amer- ican stockpile. The mil- itary also fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk mis- siles, roughly 10 times the number the Pentagon procures in a year. And it used more than 1,300 Patriot interceptor mis- siles during the war, which counts for more than two years of production at 2025 rates. Replenishing those stockpiles will take years, not months. Lockheed Martin currently produces around 650 Patriot in- terceptors a year. The company has announced plans to ramp up produc- tion of the crucial air de- fense weapon to 2,000 a year. But doing so will not be easy. And the indust- ry's ability to produce rocket motors cannot be scaled up as gulckly as Trump has demanded, officials said. Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said the military has everything it needs to carry out its mission. "We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant com- mands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capa- bilities to protect our peo- ple and our interests," he said in a statement to the Times. CI, OF MIAMI PUBLIC NOTICE A REGULARLY SCHEDULED MEET NGOF TiE MIAMI CITY COMMISSION VVILL BE HELD ON MAY za ro<v Ar sm AY l a F-IE cm MlaMlwvcaM4;, EAE.ai,zAZ.E AND CHANNEL nicOMCAITOa FOR RESIDENTS uvIIGINTHE CITY OF MlaMn. PUBUC COMMENT USING T-IE ONLINE PUBLIC COMMENT FORM IMPLEMENT OR AMEND PUBL. COMMENTWILL BEGIN AT APP.XIMATELY HO AM ACAPY OF TdEAGENDA FORT-IE CITY COMMISSION MEETING WILL BEAVAIABLEAT HUP PMIAMIEL COMICITZENS/DEFAULT ASP% MEETING ON xAYzs, 2029,0 00AN, THEMlaMI CITY COMMISSION WILL cox IDERI.FOLLOWING PLANaI.AND 20NI. 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