Trump Says Xi and Putin Promised Him No Weapons for Iran

US President Donald Trump said that China's President Xi Jinping had told him at a recent meeting in Beijing that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that the undertaking extended to Chinese companies. The remarks were published on 24 July 2026 in a post on Truth Social, the social network he founded.

In the same post, Trump wrote that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had likewise told him he would not sell weapons to Iran, despite the war in Ukraine, and that Putin understood that the United States sells weapons not to Ukraine but to NATO member states, which pay full price, adding that he had no idea how those weapons were subsequently distributed. Trump said that, considering his relationship with Xi, he took him at his word, and that he was doing him very big favours besides. Two major countries frequently discussed in connection with Iran were, in his opinion, not taking part, he wrote, and if they did it would be very bad for them and certainly not in their best interests.

The arms embargo that already applies

Iran is in any case subject to a restored United Nations arms embargo. Six Security Council resolutions adopted between 2006 and 2010 were reactivated on 27 September 2025 through the snapback mechanism of the 2015 nuclear agreement, triggered a month earlier by Britain, France and Germany. As Iran International set out, those measures include Resolution 1747 of 2007, which banned Iranian arms exports, and Resolution 1929 of 2010, which extended an embargo covering heavy conventional weapons. The conventional-arms restrictions had lapsed in 2020 before being reimposed.

The moment the post was made

The message was published against a backdrop of sharply escalating friction between Washington and Tehran. Reporting the post on the day it appeared, Colorado Politics noted that four US service members had been killed in the region the previous week, that peace and nuclear talks had collapsed, and that Trump had told Axios he was close to a decision on further military action, saying Iran had not yet received enough pain. The same report said the White House had confirmed that Trump would meet Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky at the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham in Washington the following Tuesday. Just the News, also reporting the post that day, noted that fighting between Iran and the United States had resumed after the collapse of a ceasefire, and that Russia and China had both faced accusations of supplying Iran with targeting data against American assets.

What cannot be checked

The account of both conversations rests entirely on Trump's own description of them. Neither the Chinese nor the Russian government issued a confirmation quoted in the post, and no readout, transcript or third-party record of either exchange is cited in it. The post does not say when the Beijing meeting took place, who else attended, or whether the assurances covered dual-use goods, components or technical assistance as opposed to finished weapons. It also does not say whether either undertaking was made in writing or whether any verification arrangement exists. Readers should treat the claims as the US president's characterisation of private conversations rather than as an established fact about Chinese or Russian policy.