Some lawmakers say Trump should confront Xi over Chinese support for Iran

A group of Democratic lawmakers on Monday wrote a letter to the White House urging President Donald Trump to challenge Chinese President Xi Jinping when they meet later this week over support they allege Beijing has given to Tehran in the Iran war.

Trump and Xi are set to meet Wednesday in Washington in their second summit since the war broke out in February.

The Democrats, who are all veterans of the armed services, cited a Sept. 11 Wall Street Journal report that a U.S. assessment found that a Chinese company's provision of satellite imagery supported an Iranian strike on an airbase in Jordan in July. Three U.S. soldiers died in the attack.

"Our servicemembers are paying the price in blood for this administration's pathetic refusal to confront Beijing," Reps. Pat Ryan, Seth Moulton, Ted Lieu, Chrissy Houlahan, Jason Crow and eight other Democrats wrote in the letter, which they shared with ABC News.

Trump "has an important opportunity to condemn China's role in arming and enabling Iran, and to demand an end to their support," the lawmakers added.

Rep. John Moolenaar, an influential Republican on China policy as the chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said Chinese cooperation with the Iranian military resulting in American casualties "is tantamount to an act of war against the United States."

In a separate letter addressed to the president last week, Moolenaar wrote the reported link between Chinese imagery and lethal Iranian attacks "mark[s] a dramatic unilateral escalation."

The State Department in May sanctioned four China-based entities "for providing satellite imagery that enables Iran's military strikes against U.S. forces in the Middle East." One company collected images during the war of U.S. facilities at Iran's request, the department said.

China denies its state-owned companies support Iran's war effort.

Asked earlier this month whether he would raise the issue when he comes to Washington, Trump told reporters that the Chinese "basically do what we do."

"I think he’s behaved reasonably well," Trump said of Xi on Sept. 13. "When they say that China spies on us, I say, 'You’re right, and we spy on them too,' you know? We spy on them too."

Ryan, a New York Democrat and a former Army intelligence officer who served in the Iraq war, said information could be "dangerous…in the wrong hands."

"What's worse is that Trump knows, too, and hasn’t done a thing to stop it," Ryan said.

Evan Medeiros, a China analyst at The Asia Group and a former National Security Council official in the Obama administration, said he expected the U.S. to focus on the energy crisis wrought by the war in summit discussions.

The U.S. would likely ask Chinese counterparts for assistance in isolating Iran's economy from global markets, which has been the administration’s recent strategy in the war, he said.

“I think the Chinese are going to be incredibly reluctant, and … they will want a side payment for it," Medeiros said. "I would not expect much to happen in the space."

Satellite image sharing, with potentially deadly consequences for U.S. troops in the region, was at the top of a list of priorities Moolenaar spelled out in his letter ahead of Trump's engagements with Xi. 

"We should expect the [Chinese Communist Party] to continue this murderous treachery unless consequences are imposed," he wrote.