Arming Taiwan: Israel’s Asian Periphery Doctrine

Historical precedent proves that Jerusalem can comfortably defy diplomatic anxiety to safeguard global security. On April 6, 1977, The New York Times exposed a covert transaction wherein Taiwan purchased Israeli Gabriel anti-ship missiles. This strategic transfer occurred precisely because Washington bureaucrats had cravenly refused an equivalent sale to Taipei. Consequently, Taiwanese destroyers soon carried these weapons, maintained directly by Israeli technicians at Kaohsiung. Strategic synergy deepened as Ernst David Bergmann, founding chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, spent a decade moving between Jerusalem and Chiang Kai-shek’s military-scientific complex. Taiwanese engineers subsequently utilized the Gabriel Mk 2 blueprint to build the Hsiung Feng 1 missile. Ultimately, Golda Meir’s generation viewed this proliferation not as a liability, but as a core geopolitical necessity. David Ben-Gurion’s enduring periphery doctrine dictated that a small state encircled by enemies owes threatened democracies both recognition and lethal weaponry—a foundational obligation that the Jewish state must now honor by stepping forward to arm Taiwan.

Beijing’s contemporary complicity with regional terror demands an identical, hard-nosed response. Iranian customs records from the first half of 2026 reveal that Chinese suppliers dispatched approximately 1,300 air shipments of dual-use drone and missile components to Iran’s Defense Ministry. One prominent cargo aircraft touched down in Tehran on June 17, the exact day that Washington bureaucrats foolishly announced the repulsive “Vance MOU” with the bloody Ayatollahs. Two days later, more than a dozen subsequent consignments delivered over $6 million in specialized components engineered specifically for unmanned aerial vehicles. Chinese firms additionally supplied roughly 300 tonnes of missile-propellant chemicals right before major hostilities erupted. Iran’s Mahan Air, operating in open defiance of US sanctions, rapidly multiplied its Beijing–Tehran cargo flights while Iranian-engineered drones struck Israeli population centers. Chinese officials watched a US naval blockade squeeze Iranian ports and simply chose to fly the components over the blockade. Thus, any totalitarian government that systematically feeds the arsenal targeting Jerusalem forfeits all neutral claims regarding the Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrine explicitly outlines the opening salvo of the coming Pacific conflict. Chinese military literature ranks a joint blockade—defined by maritime interdiction, air superiority, port isolation, and economic strangulation—as a preferred operational threshold above a simple communiqué but below a full amphibious landing. Dictator Xi Jinping instructed his military forces to achieve operational readiness to seize Taiwan by force by the 2027 centenary. American intelligence officials mistakenly downplay a full invasion before 2028, ignoring the fact that a tight quarantine requires fewer landing craft and far less logistical sustainment. Financial assessments indicate a devastating first-year global economic hit of 5.3 percent of global output from a blockade, while a shooting war would vaporize $10.6 trillion from global GDP. Commercial analysis confirms the Taiwan Strait carried more than $2.4 trillion in goods in 2024 alone. President Trump’s erratic demands that Taipei spend 10 percent of its GDP on defense represent an impossible standard for a trading island of 23 million people, particularly after Washington maliciously delayed a congressionally cleared arms package in 2026 as a cheap negotiating chip with Xi.

Nonetheless, the State of Israel possesses the exact diplomatic framework required to shatter Beijing’s looming campaign of totalitarian extortion. On September 13, 2017, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office boldly declared that the Jewish state supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of their own, making Jerusalem the sole global government to endorse the Erbil referendum. Today, Taipei warrants identical strategic clarity; ergo, facing the 2027 strategic clock requires three immediate, integrated countermeasures from the lazy Israeli defense establishment.

First, the Israeli Ministry of Defense must rapidly revive the historic Gabriel channel through an aggressive 120-day technical surge. Israeli authorities should immediately license coastal anti-ship missiles, loitering-munition kits, and advanced cruise-missile intercept software directly to Taiwanese shipyards. In tandem, compressed military crews must cycle through the Palmachim Airbase and Haifa port before the PLA centenary arrives. Israeli instructors could also deploy aboard Taiwanese frigates under thin commercial cover, while defense planners pre-position spare launchers and decoy emitters in Palau and the Philippines for rapid airlift. These simple measures provide Taipei with an immediate blockade-breaker that bypasses any political pauses imposed by the cowardly Trump administration.

Simultaneously, the Mossad and the Directorate of Military Intelligence must establish a permanent operational cell alongside Taiwan’s National Security Bureau. This joint intelligence initiative must stream real-time Chinese shipping patterns, AIS tracking manipulation, and front-company typologies harvested from the Mahan Air corridor. Every single entity that consigned dual-use electronics to Tehran belongs on a shared international watch list provided to Japanese and Australian customs officials. Intelligence networks that successfully mapped Iran’s drone pipeline must now serve as the early warning tripwire against a Chinese quarantine.

Finally, Jerusalem must convene a dedicated ‘Formosa Pact’ alongside Asunción, Guatemala City, Prague, Vilnius, Tokyo, and willing Abraham Accords signatories. This coalition must formally affirm Taiwan’s right to self-determination using the exact geopolitical language applied to the Kurds in 2017. Member states will systematically publish the identities of Chinese suppliers discovered in customs data while denying port access to any vessels transporting listed dual-use cargo toward the PLA. Affirming a free people’s right to sovereignty costs Israel zero fighter squadrons. Conversely, maintaining silence after Beijing funneled 1,300 military shipments to a regime killing Israeli citizens destroys the moral and strategic historical credibility of the periphery doctrine itself. The Jewish state must act immediately to defend the sovereignty of Asia’s lone robust democracy before Taiwan falls to the same predatory maw that swallowed Hong Kong and Macau.