James King

This was a regular press briefing in Beijing on Monday.

He said that China has taken a consistently prudent and responsible approach to arms exports.

Obviously, he's talking about arms exports to Iran in this case.

It isn't any kind of a secret that China has been selling arms to Iran for decades.

That's no secret at all.

What's really key is whether China has been selling arms to Iran since the end of February when this war started.

between the U.S.

and Israel and Iran began.

That's the key point, and that's where quite a lot of ambiguity lies right at the moment.

But it does seem like a potentially incendiary situation.

I don't know how this is going to pan out, but obviously we're all watching closely.

What are you seeing on this front, Alice?

Yeah, completely.

But I also think that given the way this conflict has flip-flopped with regard to China's role in it, it is possible that we might be back with China being a mediator or a peacemaker.

Let's not forget that behind the scenes, China's foreign minister Wang Yi worked

very hard to try to create a more positive outcome when U.S.

Vice President J.D.

Vance met with his Iranian interlocutor in Pakistan last week to try to talk this through.

They spoke for 21 hours.

It does seem that there was at least some traction in that.