Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left today for China, where on May 6 in Beijing he will have meetings with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and others. This comes after his April 27 trip to Russia, where he met in St. Petersburg with President Vladimir Putin, with mutual pledges of strategic common interest. Araghchi’s visit to China this week is his first there since the Feb. 28 startup of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.
Araghchi reiterated today on departure, that the United States will not be able to open the Strait of Hormuz through military action. He said that Trump’s “Project Freedom is Project Dead End.”
China has been playing an important role behind the scenes in the conversations that have been ongoing in Pakistan, toward a path of negotiated resolution of the U.S.-Israel war. Araghchi said that negotiations to end the war were continuing, “thanks to Pakistan’s significant contributions,” but that the United States, and the U.A.E., which is mooting entering the fray, should “be careful not to be drawn back into the quagmire by ill-wishers.”
