US lawmakers have asked Xi Jinping to pressure Iran not to inflame tensions in the Middle East in the first meeting between American congressional leaders and the Chinese president in eight years.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who was in Beijing with a bipartisan delegation of senators, also urged Xi to harden China’s reaction to the Hamas attack on Israel at the weekend, during which gunmen from the Palestinian group massacred civilians and took hostages.

“A bunch of us made the request that China use its influence in Iran to not allow the conflagration to spread,” Schumer told reporters after the meeting on Monday. “He [Xi] said they have influence with Iran in many different ways and we asked them to do everything they could.”