Trump hit with major snub on world stage just hours before departing for China summit

President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week for a high-stakes summit – viewed by some as a “de facto deadline for stabilizing the Iran war” – but not only will Trump now likely show up to the summit “empty-handed,” the president’s efforts were severely undercut just days or hours before his expected departure.

The Trump administration has been working to secure a deal to bring about the end of the U.S. war against Iran since at least early April, but thus far has been unable to reach an agreement with Tehran. Iranian officials were given a new proposal from the Trump administration last week, which Tehran responded to with a proposal of their own on Sunday – a proposal that was quickly rejected by Trump as “unacceptable.”

And on Monday, as Trump readies to depart to China without having brokered a deal, an Iranian diplomat announced that Tehran was ready to accept a peace deal – only, a peace deal proposed by China and not the Trump administration.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has announced its readiness to support the Chinese president's four-point plan aimed at establishing lasting security and shared development in the Persian Gulf region, an issue that was also emphasized during the meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries,” wrote Iranian Ambassador Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli in a statement released on social media, according to an automatic translation.

Per The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese government has yet to publicly disclose details of the plan, but Iran’s embrace of the proposal may weigh heavy on Trump and Jinping’s discussions later this week.

Over the weekend, journalist Charbel Antoun suggested that Trump had good reason to secure a deal with Iran ahead of the U.S.-China summit, and argued that the president would enter talks with a “weakened” hand should he fail to do so.