BEIJING — The timing of a highly anticipated summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping is in doubt after Trump asked to delay it by “a month or so” so he can focus on the widening war with Iran.

It’s the latest complication from the U.S.-Israeli attack on Tehran, which has close ties with Beijing, as the conflict adds another possible point of tension between America and China.

The summit was meant to focus on trade, as both Trump and Xi seek to extend a delicate tariff truce between the world’s two biggest economies. But China showed little immediate sign that it was bothered by the likely delay, which analysts told NBC News may actually prove beneficial to efforts to further stabilize relations.

Trump said Monday that his China trip planned for later this month could be postponed because of the war, telling reporters in Washington, “I think it’s important that I be here.” But his administration has not confirmed that the trip is delayed or shared more specific dates for when it would be rescheduled.

Beijing did little to clarify the situation Tuesday, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry saying it had “no further information at this time.”

“China and the United States are maintaining communication regarding the timing of President Trump’s visit to China and other related issues,” spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters at a regular news briefing in Beijing, repeating a line from the day before.

The White House had said Trump would be traveling from March 31 to April 2. China had not yet confirmed the dates.

With global shipping and energy prices upended by Iran’s effective shutdown of the crucial Strait of Hormuz, Trump has been trying to enlist naval support from countries that import oil and gas through the waterway. On Sunday, he told The Financial Times that he would “like to know” whether China was going to help and suggested that he might delay the trip.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sought to clarify that postponing the trip “would have nothing to do with the Chinese making a commitment to the Strait of Hormuz.” Trump later said there were “no tricks to it” and that he looked forward to the trip.

China also says the visit has nothing to do with the strait and has been outwardly unruffled by the uncertainty around Trump’s plans.

Far from being upset by a possible delay, China “might actually be a little relieved,” said Dominic Chiu, a senior analyst for U.S.-China relations at Eurasia Group.

“From what I understand, preparations for the Trump state visit have been going pretty poorly,” he told NBC News in an interview.

Even before the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began Feb. 28, there was reportedly “a lack of coordination on the side of the White House to come up with concrete deliverables, to gather a potential business delegation to accompany Trump to China,” Chiu said.

If the summit is delayed, “that gives both sides a bit more time to talk,” he said.

Other analysts agreed.

“Right now the Iran war is clearly the Trump administration’s top foreign policy priority, so I doubt Beijing will interpret an American delay as an intentional negotiation tactic,” said Austin Strange, an associate professor of politics at the University of Hong Kong.

“In principle China would still like a more stable and positive relationship with the U.S. and should be willing to reschedule a Trump visit to China, particularly compared to the much less realistic request for Beijing to contribute to escorts of commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz,” Strange said in emailed comments.

Though the latest round of U.S.-China trade talks appeared to go well, it ended Monday in Paris without any public announcements. Expectations for the Trump-Xi summit, which comes after years of turbulence in U.S.-China relations, have generally been low.

“I think a grand bargain is increasingly unlikely,” Chiu said.

Instead, he said, the U.S. and China will focus on the “lowest-hanging fruits” they can offer each other, such as Chinese pledges to buy more U.S. agricultural and energy products, or to further crack down on the international flow of fentanyl ingredients.

With many of Trump’s global tariffs recently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, Beijing also sees the summit as an opportunity to negotiate lower rates, Chiu said.

Though Beijing has publicly criticized new Section 301 trade investigations the Trump administration has opened against China and other countries as it tries to replace those tariffs, it appears to consider them a “manageable irritant,” he said.

And while China is concerned about the supply of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz, “I don’t think they are exactly wringing their hands over it,” Chiu said.

Though Trump said Monday that China — the world’s largest energy importer — gets over 90% of its oil through the strait, experts put the figure closer to half. China is also a major producer of oil and gas in its own right and has been building up its strategic oil reserves.

Some of its oil is also still getting through the strait, said Tim Huxley, director of Mandarin Shipping in Hong Kong. But even if its energy supply is relatively secure, China would still prefer an end to the blockade.

“China has got enough for the next few months,” Huxley said. “But the longer this goes on, the more difficult it is.”

Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing, and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Tuesday that the commander of Iran’s feared Basij paramilitary force was among the senior leaders killed in overnight strikes in Tehran, and the Israeli defense minister Israel Katz later confirmed that Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was also “eliminated.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have instructed the IDF to continue pursuing the leadership of the terror and oppression regime in Iran,” Katz said in a statement, adding that Israel would update President Trump on the killing of the two senior Iranian figures “when morning breaks in Washington.”

“The Israeli Air Force, acting on IDF intelligence, targeted and eliminated Gholamreza Soleimani, who operated as commander of the Basij unit for the past six years,” the IDF said in an earlier statement, accusing the Basij, under Soleimani’s command, of leading “the main repression operations, employing severe violence, widespread arrests, and the use of force against civilian demonstrators” to quash anti-government protests that swept across Iran in January.

The IDF called Soleimani’s assassination “an additional significant blow to the regime’s security command-and-control structures” and it vowed to “continue to operate with determination against commanders of the Iranian terror regime.”

Until Monday, Larijani was among the most senior leaders of the regime still alive in Iran. He had been a defiant voice since the war began and he warned only a week ago, in a message aimed at Mr. Trump, that the Iranian people “do not fear your empty threats; even those greater than you have failed to erase them… so beware lest you be the ones who disappear.”

Netanyahu’s office, meanwhile, posted a photo on social media of the Israeli leader on the phone, with a message saying only: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders the elimination of senior Iranian regime officials.” 

KABUL, Afghanistan — Rescue crews were still digging bodies out of the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital in the Afghan capital on Tuesday morning, after officials there said that an overnight Pakistani airstrike killed at least 400 people in a dramatic escalation of a conflict between the two neighbors that is now in its third week.

Pakistan has denied Afghanistan’s accusation that it targeted a hospital, insisting that its strikes, which were also conducted in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, were aimed at military facilities. It dismissed Afghanistan’s claims of hundreds of casualties from a strike on a hospital as being propaganda.

The casualties were taken to several hospitals in the area. It wasn’t immediately possible to independently confirm the death toll.

The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan began in late February, and has seen repeated cross-border clashes as well as airstrikes inside Afghanistan. International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded. The strike came hours after Afghan officials said that the two sides exchanged fire along their common border, killing four people in Afghanistan.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of providing safe haven for militants who frequently carry out attacks inside Pakistan, especially to the Pakistani Taliban, a group separate but closely allied with the Afghan Taliban who took over Afghanistan in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops. The group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. Kabul denies the charge.

In a late-night post on X, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the airstrike had hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility in Kabul, at about 9 p.m. local time.

He said that large sections of the facility had been destroyed, and that the death toll had “so far” reached 400 people, while about 250 people had been reported wounded. There was no updated official death toll early Tuesday morning.

Local television stations posted footage on X showing security forces using flashlights as they carried out casualties while firefighters struggled to extinguish flames among the ruins of a building.

The Omid hospital was renamed and expanded in size roughly a year ago from the Ibn Sina Drug Addiction Treatment Hospital. The site is located near a former NATO military base, Camp Phoenix, where U.S. forces used to train the Afghan National Army. After the Taliban seized control of the country in 2021, the base was taken over by Afghanistan’s new authorities. It wasn’t immediately clear what was now housed on the site of the former base.

Pakistan’s Information Ministry said in an X post that the Pakistani military had “precisely targeted” the Camp Phoenix site, which it said was now a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site.” It said in its post that Omid hospital was “multiple kilometers” away from the former camp and accused Afghan officials of lying.

“Another important question also lingers, as to why would an alleged drug rehabilitation facility be colocated with lethal ammunition storage site in a military camp? This also remains unanswered,” the Information Ministry wrote.

Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike on X, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors.” He said those killed were “innocent civilians and addicts.”

“We strongly condemn this crime and consider such an act to be against all accepted principles and a crime against humanity,” he said in a separate post on X.

A member of the rescue team working at the site on Tuesday morning, Allah Mohammad Farooq, said that hundreds had been killed.

“When we arrived here, everyone was buried under the rubble,” he said. “We then used a crane to pull them out. Most of the people were dead, and many are still trapped under the debris. “

A man sitting outside the site broke down in tears as he recounted hearing about the bombing. Haji Najibullah said that his son and other relatives were being treated in the hospital.

“We have no information about who is alive and who is buried under the rubble,” he said. “Only God knows who may have survived and who may be injured. So far, we have no news at all.”

The U.N. human rights expert in Afghanistan, Richard Bennet, said in an X post that he was “dismayed by fresh reports of #Pakistan airstrikes in #Afghanistan and resulting civilian casualties.” Offering his condolences, he added: “I urge parties to de-escalate, exercise maximum restraint & respect international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects such as hospitals.”

Shortly after Afghanistan accused Pakistan of targeting the hospital Monday night, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying no hospital was targeted in Kabul.

Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on X in the early hours of Tuesday that the Pakistani military had “carried out precision airstrikes” targeting military installations in Kabul and the eastern province of Nangarhar. He said that “technical support infrastructure and ammunition storage facilities” at two locations in Kabul were destroyed.

“All targeting has been done with precision only at those infrastructures which are being used by Afghan Taliban regime to support its multiple terror proxies,” he wrote.

The fighting — the most severe between the two neighbors — began in late February after Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan that Kabul said killed civilians. The clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October, after earlier fighting killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants.

Pakistan has declared that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.

On Saturday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said that Afghanistan’s Taliban administration crossed a “red line” by deploying drones that wounded several civilians in Pakistan last week.

___

Munir Ahmed reported from Islamabad, and Elena Becatoros from Athens, Greece.