US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington hopes to convince Beijing to play a “more active role” in resolving the Iran crisis, a clear sign the issue will come into sharp focus when President Donald Trump holds his closely watched summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Speaking to Fox News aboard Air Force One, Rubio said the Iran war was a “huge source of instability” and “threatens to destabilise Asia more than any other part of the world because it’s heavily reliant on the straits for energy”.

“It’s in [China’s] interest to resolve this. We hope to convince them to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they’re doing now and trying to do now in the Persian Gulf,” he said.

Rubio is part of a muscular US delegation accompanying Trump to China, the first of such visit by a US president in close to a decade. Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday night and is set to hold talks with Xi on Thursday morning.

When departing for Beijing on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he planned to have a “long talk” with the Chinese leader about the Iran war, adding that “good things are going to happen”.

But Trump also said he did not think he needed Xi’s help with Iran and that the US would “win it one way or the other, peacefully or otherwise”.