New Delhi, May 13 -- President Donald Trump arrived in Asia this week facing one of the most volatile geopolitical moments of his presidency, as mounting tensions over Iran, oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and expanding US sanctions on Chinese firms threaten to derail a fragile truce between Washington and Beijing.

Trump's visit to Beijing, his first major summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in more than six months, comes at a moment when the US and China are attempting to prevent their increasingly hostile rivalry from spiraling into a full-scale economic and diplomatic confrontation. Yet beneath the carefully staged language of cooperation lies a widening divide over Iran, global energy security, Taiwan, semicon...