A group of Democratic lawmakers has urged President Donald Trump to confront Chinese President Xi Jinping regarding alleged support from Beijing to Tehran in the ongoing Iran war. The lawmakers, all veterans of the armed services, penned a letter to the White House ahead of Trump and Xi's summit scheduled for Wednesday in Washington.

The core of their concern stems from a September 11 Wall Street Journal report, which detailed a U.S. assessment indicating that a Chinese company provided satellite imagery that aided an Iranian strike on an airbase in Jordan in July. This attack resulted in the deaths of three U.S. soldiers, a fact that has galvanized these lawmakers.

In their letter, the Democrats stated that American service members are "paying the price in blood for this administration's pathetic refusal to confront Beijing." They believe Trump has a significant opportunity during the summit to "condemn China's role in arming and enabling Iran, and to demand an end to their support."

Republican Representative John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, echoed these sentiments, describing Chinese cooperation with the Iranian military that leads to American casualties as "tantamount to an act of war against the United States." In a separate letter to the president, Moolenaar characterized the reported link as "a dramatic unilateral escalation."

This call for confrontation follows previous actions by the U.S. State Department, which in May sanctioned four China-based entities for supplying satellite imagery that facilitated Iranian military strikes against U.S. forces in the Middle East. The department noted that one company specifically collected images of U.S. facilities at Iran's request during the war.

China, however, has denied that its state-owned companies are supporting Iran's war efforts. When questioned earlier this month about whether he would raise this issue with Xi, President Trump suggested that China's actions were comparable to U.S. intelligence gathering, stating, "the Chinese basically do what we do. I think he’s behaved reasonably well... When they say that China spies on us, I say, 'You’re right, and we spy on them too.'"

Representative Pat Ryan, a New York Democrat and a former Army intelligence officer, expressed frustration with the administration's response, noting that "What's worse is that Trump knows, too, and hasn’t done a thing to stop it." He emphasized the potential danger of such information falling into the wrong hands.

Analysts, such as Evan Medeiros, a China expert at The Asia Group and former National Security Council official, anticipate that discussions during the summit will likely focus on the energy crisis exacerbated by the war. It remains to be seen whether the issue of Chinese support for Iran will be a central point of contention between the two leaders.