Trump's Ceasefires Unravel as He Lands in Beijing

Donald Trump left Washington for Beijing on May 13 with two of the ceasefires he had brokered unraveling at his back and the Iran intelligence picture moving against his public framing.

Trump rejected Tehran's latest peace proposals — transmitted via Pakistan — as "garbage" and "totally unacceptable," called the April 8 Iran ceasefire "on massive life support," and warned, alongside Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, that the United States could resume strikes. The intelligence picture cut the other way. A classified US assessment circulated in early May, reported by the New York Times, found Iran had retained roughly 70% of its prewar missile stockpile and restored operational access to 30 of 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, contradicting administration claims its capabilities had been "decimated." Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the House on Wednesday that Iran was "frighteningly close" to a nuclear weapon and "weeks away" from enriching one ton of uranium to weapons-grade. The regional spillover did not pause: Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed 13 on Tuesday and eight more, including two children, on the highway south of Beirut on May 13, according to Lebanon's health ministry. The ministry said 380 people had been killed in Lebanon since the April 16 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, with more than 10,000 homes damaged or destroyed and 5,386 housing units completely destroyed.

Russia ran the day's other unraveling on schedule. Moscow launched 753 drones in waves from midnight onwards, hitting Kyiv, Lviv near the Polish border, Odesa on the Black Sea and energy, defence and government infrastructure in one of the longest aerial attacks of the war; at least six were killed and dozens including children wounded. Ukrainian intelligence said the waves were routed deliberately near NATO borders and timed to Trump's arrival in China. President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Bucharest Nine summit in Romania during the barrage, urging Europe to absorb Ukraine's battlefield experience into the EU SAFE rearmament programme and offering bilateral drone deals; leaders of the Bucharest Nine and the Nordic countries called for increased pressure on Moscow and reaffirmed NATO's eastern defences. Trump, departing for Beijing, said the end of the war was "very close" — the US-brokered three-day ceasefire had expired May 11 with no diplomatic follow-on.

Inside Russian lines the offensive narrative looked thinner than the diplomatic one. Brigade commander Ihor Burdeinyi (128th Separate Zakarpattia Mountain Assault Brigade) said Russian forces were abandoning attempts to take Stepnohirsk in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, citing an average mobilized-soldier survival time of about 12 minutes; the settlement remains under Ukrainian control with no Russian troops inside. Long-range Ukrainian strikes continued: a May 7 drone hit forced a multi-week shutdown of Russia's Perm oil refinery — three primary distillation units plus secondary units halted — and Special Operations Forces struck the Tamanneftegaz oil terminal on the Taman Peninsula overnight on May 12-13, more than 300 km from the front line. Ukraine's Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets reported May 13 that 2025 had become the deadliest year for civilians since the start of the full-scale invasion: 2,514 killed and 12,142 wounded in government-controlled territory, against a cumulative tally since February 2022 of 15,172 civilians killed, including 686 children.

Westminster delivered the day's other political shock. Health Secretary Wes Streeting prepared to launch a Labour leadership challenge to Keir Starmer as early as Thursday, having met him for less than 20 minutes at Downing Street on Wednesday morning. More than 90 Labour MPs publicly called for Starmer's resignation against more than 110 supporting him to remain; the party had lost just under 1,500 English council seats the previous week on top of losses in Scotland and Wales. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told the prime minister he faced "a crisis of vision, charisma and electoral success." Downing Street insisted Starmer retained "full confidence" in Streeting, who remained health secretary in name only. King Charles III delivered the throne speech in the House of Lords setting out around three dozen bills with a security framing; gilt yields rose and sterling moved on the leadership uncertainty.

The US institutional picture continued to crack. Wholesale and producer-price indices both posted 6% annual jumps in April — the largest since February 2023 — driven by a 15.6% monthly surge in fuel costs, against an annual CPI of 3.8%, the highest since May 2023. An Economist/YouGov survey of 1,549 respondents found 59% said the economy was getting worse against 15% who said it was improving. The Pentagon announced framework agreements with Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos and Zone 5 to acquire 10,000 low-cost containerized missiles, plus a Castelion deal for a minimum 500 Blackbeard hypersonic missiles a year and authority sought to buy more than 12,000 over five years — framed as a stock replenishment after the war against Iran. A separate government report priced the proposed Golden Dome national missile-defence system at $1.3 trillion over 20 years. A federal appeals court temporarily paused a lower court's ruling against Trump's 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act, restoring administrative cover for the duty for now; David Venturella was named acting director of ICE, and Kyle Diamantas became acting FDA commissioner after Marty Makary's departure.

Trump's first hours in Beijing collapsed the structural Indo-Pacific argument into one room. A Foreign Affairs analysis circulating Tuesday argued China had gained an effective veto over US national security measures, including export controls, as part of the deal Trump and Xi endorsed at Busan in October 2025; Washington had withdrawn a regulation closing a semiconductor-sales loophole as part of that arrangement. The Beijing summit was expected to test Beijing's willingness to press Tehran on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while Xi pressed for an explicit US position against Taiwanese sovereignty and limits on US arms sales.