ANALYSIS: Trump reportedly told Xi “unacceptable”; Beijing omits Iran and keeps Mahan Air flying

The missing word

A readout without Iran

Iran.

The word isn’t there.

On September 25 at 7:50 a.m. Beijing time, China’s Foreign Ministry published its readout. The previous day’s talks between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, at the White House.

Not once the word Iran.

Yet the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is nearing its seventh month, AFP noted two days earlier.

The same day, in Washington, the U.S. ambassador to China said the opposite. Trump had reportedly called Chinese help for Iran unacceptable.

A word on one side. A blank on the other.

Under the drones

Between the two are people who don’t read readouts.

They know the drone of an engine at night. They know the silence just before. They know that silence is the worst moment.

The Shahed was born in Iran. Its name comes back every morning in the Ukrainian Air Force’s bulletins. On the 25th again, it counted hundreds of attack drones launched at Ukraine overnight, Shaheds among them.

The name has already crossed several borders.

A word in Washington. A blank in Beijing.

Unacceptable, says the ambassador

Friday, on CNBC

On Friday, David Perdue went on CNBC. He is the U.S. ambassador to China. Reuters reported his words the same day.

Washington had warned Beijing weeks ago, he said. Any help to Iran was “totally unacceptable.” Direct or indirect. Intelligence, parts or military equipment.

Then: “President Trump made that very clear again yesterday.”

Yesterday was September 24. The meeting.

Relative trust

Perdue speaks of an “ongoing drumbeat.” Of a frank and open conversation. Of two leaders building a relationship of relative trust.

Relative trust. And unacceptable.

Same interview. Same morning.

Every time the two men talk, Perdue adds, they reach another level of intimacy on these hard questions.

Intimacy is good. The public record is better.

The strong word exists. It has a witness. It has a title: ambassador. It has a day: the 24th. It doesn’t yet have a consequence.

The Reuters dispatch cites no Chinese response to that sentence.

On the American side, I found no published document that carries it. It lives in an interview, reported by an agency.

For now, unacceptable is a TV-studio word.

What Beijing wrote

A polished text

The Chinese readout is long. It is polished. It says a lot.

The readout speaks of a stable relationship. Cooperation dominates. Competition is kept within “proper limits.”

It speaks of trade. A new round of consultations has produced new outcomes, it says.

It speaks of artificial intelligence. It has Trump praising a great visit and a close friendship.

It even lends him a wish: to continue the trade dialogue and reach “an even better deal.” AI, it has him say, “concerns the future of humanity.”

It speaks of Taiwan.

Finally, in one sentence, it speaks of an exchange of views. On the Middle East. On what it calls “the Ukraine crisis.” On the Korean Peninsula.

A crisis, says Beijing. An act of aggression, the United Nations General Assembly voted on March 2, 2022.

Other people’s Iran

Where did Iran go?

The Middle East, yes. Iran, no. Trump’s sentence, according to his ambassador, leaves no trace.

According to Time magazine, citing Chinese state media, Xi did talk about Iran during the meeting. He hoped Washington and Tehran would resume their negotiations. He said Beijing would support a return to their fourteen-point memorandum of understanding.

That is Iran in Beijing’s mouth. A negotiation between two other countries.

Not a word on Chinese help.

Beijing talks about other people’s Iran. Never its own.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Tuesday, “illicit”

Three days. In order.

On September 22, AFP questioned Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun. Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, had just promised Iranian airlines a hard time around the world.

Guo’s answer: “China opposes illicit unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law.”

He added that they lack a Security Council mandate.

Wednesday, Guangzhou

On September 23, Mahan Air flight IRM093 left Tehran. It landed in Guangzhou at 4:39 p.m. local time, according to tracking data cited by AFP.

A detail the agency noted: the flight did not appear on Baiyun airport’s official website. The plane lands. The screen stays silent.

On September 24, Xi walked into the White House. Trump told him, according to Perdue, that Chinese help to Iran was unacceptable.

Tuesday, “illicit.” Wednesday, Guangzhou. Thursday, “unacceptable.”

I stand with the people who live under the Iranian regime’s drones. I oppose Beijing’s decision, voiced on September 22 by Guo Jiakun, to treat as illicit the sanctions that close the skies to Mahan Air.

Because the very next day, one of that airline’s planes landed in Guangzhou.

Three days were enough to show who rules the sky.

The Mahan Air corridor

What the Treasury says

Mahan Air is no ordinary airline. Not for Washington.

The Treasury has sanctioned it since October 12, 2011.

On July 30, it again described it as a key conduit for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Weapons. Operatives. Military materiel. Drone systems.

The Treasury also accuses it of arranging travel for Quds Force personnel and military training.

That day, it also targeted three entities in Shanghai. A logistics firm. Its general manager. A travel agency. All accused of serving Mahan Air.

Four, then twenty-seven

According to The Wall Street Journal, as reported by the Times of Israel, Mahan Air was flying about four flights a week between China and Tehran in early March.

By late April: about twenty-seven.

Nearly seven times as many. In under two months. From Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou.

Iran International, citing the same paper, counts thirty-nine China-Iran flights in the first week of September. Twice the prewar level.

On the 23rd, at Mahan Air’s Shanghai office, nobody had received a cancellation notice, AFP reports. Tickets for the following week were selling as usual.

A widening route doesn’t look like an embargo.

What the cargo holds carry

Customs data

What is in the holds? Nobody publishes a manifest.

The Wall Street Journal says it reviewed Iranian customs data. According to the Times of Israel, which reports on the investigation, about 1,300 air shipments left China in the first half of the year.

Destination: Iran’s Defence Ministry. Contents: drone and missile components.

GPS receivers. Electric motors. Aircraft engine parts.

Dual-use goods, sometimes declared as defence imports, exempt from duties.

Iran International, citing the same investigation, adds sodium perchlorate, used in missile propellant, and electronics used in Shaheds. More than 300 tonnes of chemical compounds reportedly arrived before the war began on February 28.

Nothing I have read says which airline carried these shipments. So I don’t write it.

June 17

One delivery reached Tehran on June 17, according to the same paper. That day, Washington and Tehran agreed to a temporary truce.

Two days later, more than a dozen shipments followed. More than $6 million in parts usable in drones.

A truce on one side. Crates on the other.

A crate doesn’t say what it will become. An electric motor turns a fan, or a drone’s propeller. That is the whole problem with dual use.

These numbers come from a single investigation, which I could not read at the source. I report them as its numbers. They don’t carry this piece. Guangzhou does.

On truce day, the crates were landing.

Beijing invokes the UN

Rules and a mandate

Beijing has an answer. It deserves its strongest form.

China respects international rules, it said in response to The Wall Street Journal’s accusations. It strictly controls its exports of dual-use goods.

American sanctions, by contrast, are unilateral. No Security Council mandate covers them.

Put another way: the law is the UN. And Washington is not the UN.

The veto and the names

And yet the argument has a blind spot. The Council whose mandate Beijing demands is the one where Beijing sits with a veto.

Strict control, for its part, has names that slipped through it.

On May 8, the Treasury designated a company in Ningbo. The charge: millions of dollars’ worth of carbon fibre and honeycomb fabric sent to the IRGC Aerospace Force.

That same May 8, a Shanghai company was accused of coordinating arms purchases for an Iranian centre, including man-portable surface-to-air missiles.

On June 10, the Treasury designated a Hong Kong company, its Shanghai subsidiary and three Chinese nationals. The charge: facilitating arms purchases for the Guards.

On July 30, it designated the three Shanghai entities tied to Mahan Air.

Names. Cities. Dates.

No Chinese response on any of them, in the documents I have read.

A mandate you can block is not an argument.

What Washington spared

September 8

Now I have to look at my own side through the same lens.

On September 8, the Treasury hit hard. Thirty-six targets. Twenty-seven Iranian airlines.

Front companies in the Emirates and Turkey. Freight agents in Turkey, Malaysia, Kazakhstan.

Not one entity based in China. Not one in Hong Kong.

Yet the same release describes the trick. Mahan Air reportedly received at least three Boeing 777s this summer, through a channel running via the Emirates and Oman. Iran, the Treasury writes, has long used front companies in third countries.

The small ones comply

The 27 airlines targeted are losing their skies, country after country, according to Al Jazeera. The Emirates suspended all their flights. Oman, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkmenistan suspended or restricted them. Turkmenistan even turned back a Tehran-Dushanbe flight.

Smaller Iranian airlines keep flying to China and Armenia, Al Jazeera notes. Two countries resisting American pressure.

On Thursday morning, an Iran Airtour Tehran-Dubai flight was cancelled after tickets had been issued. Iran’s civil aviation authority says it is negotiating to restore links with the Emirates.

After Guangzhou, the Treasury declined to tell AFP how it would enforce its threat.

That is the part that troubles my side. Washington gets compliance from Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Ashgabat. Not from Guangzhou.

Abu Dhabi did not demand a Security Council mandate.

Why the small ones and not the giant?

Sanctions bite the small. The giant watches.

Twenty-seven a week

The unit that counts

There is a more honest unit than press releases. The flight.

Four a week in March. Twenty-seven by late April. Thirty-nine in the first week of September. Figures from a single investigation, cited by two outlets.

Then a single one, on September 23, with a number and a time. That one, AFP tracked.

Twenty-seven flights a week is almost four a day. One in the morning. One in the afternoon. One in the evening. And one more.

Every flight is a cargo hold. Every hold is a question nobody opens.

Far from here

The people who live under the drones don’t count in flights.

They count in nights. In minutes between the siren and the noise. In windows.

Tape in an X across the glass: everyone under the drones knows it. It protects almost nothing. People put it up anyway.

And yet in Washington, the word meant to close this corridor was spoken in a meeting room. Not in a register.

The flight can be counted. The word, not yet.

A word said face to face

The good move

We judge the act. Not the man.

Telling Xi to his face that Chinese help to Iran is unacceptable is a good move, if the sentence was spoken. It names the first threat. It ties it to the second.

The Treasury designations of May, June and July against Chinese companies are acts. They carry this administration’s signature.

The bad move

Leaving the word without follow-through would be a bad move. Beijing would pocket the sentence and keep the corridor.

Talking, in the same interview, about relative trust with the leader who keeps that corridor open helps no one.

If this word stays without a sequel…

I’d like to believe it will be enough. I don’t believe it yet.

And yet the judgment isn’t in. It will be rendered in the Treasury’s registers. Not in TV studios.

A good move if it designates. Otherwise, one more sentence.

What comes next

The Guangzhou test

Here is what comes next. And how we will know.

On September 8, the Treasury gave warning. Any foreign company that helps sanctioned Iranian airlines faces serious consequences. Aircraft transfers. Freight. Sales agents.

Bessent, for his part, spoke of fuel, landing services, tickets. And of being cut off from the dollar system.

If the Treasury designates a fuel supplier, a ground-services provider or a sales agent in China, the word will have content.

If the Treasury settles for Turkish or Malaysian intermediaries, the word will stay an ambassador’s line.

If the Treasury does nothing, Beijing will have learned the lesson of September 23. The plane lands. Nothing follows.

Yet the Treasury knows how to target Shanghai. It did so on July 30. It knows where to look.

An arrivals board

Tickets are selling, the Shanghai office said.

The next flights will have numbers. Arrival times.

The test is public. All it takes is an arrivals board.

The next landing will show what the word was worth.

A line, or a camera

The line drawn

Two readings are still standing. They have to be weighed.

First reading: Trump really drew a line in front of Xi. Perdue says so. The designations of May, June and July make it credible. More will follow.

The word for the camera

Second reading: the word was said in order to be reported. The corridor stays open as long as trade moves forward.

The Chinese readout leans toward the second. It kept trade, cooperation, friendship. It filed Iran under other people’s Middle East.

September 8 leans toward the second too. Not one Chinese address.

Al Jazeera wrote it on the 24th. Trump wants Beijing to help isolate Iran. Beijing, Tehran’s top trading partner, is resisting. No progress was announced on that point.

I would prefer the first. It better protects those who live under the drones. But I don’t write what I prefer.

My call, today: the second reading wins, until proven otherwise. That proof has a known shape. A designation, a Chinese name, a date.

The proof we await fits on one line of a register.

A word against a corridor

A spokesperson, a flight, a blank

An ambassador. A sentence. An interview.

Facing them, a spokesperson, a flight, a readout without the word.

On the 22nd, Beijing said what it thinks of the sanctions. On the 23rd, a plane showed it. On the 25th, the readout confirmed it by staying silent.

Landings in Guangzhou

What is an “unacceptable” said to Xi worth, as long as no Treasury designation targets the Mahan Air corridor?

Flight IRM093 landed at 4:39 p.m. The readout came out at 7:50 a.m. In between, a meeting, and a word.

Unacceptable, until the next Mahan Air flight.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Reuters — Perdue on CNBC: Trump told Xi that helping Iran is unacceptable, September 25, 2026
• Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — readout of the Xi-Trump talks, September 25, 2026
• Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — Guo Jiakun’s press conference on sanctions against Iranian airlines, September 22, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Times of Israel — The Wall Street Journal’s investigation into Chinese shipments and Mahan Air, September 24, 2026
• Times of Israel (AFP) — a Mahan Air flight lands in Guangzhou, September 23, 2026
• Al Jazeera — the Emirates and five countries close their skies to Iranian airlines, September 25, 2026