The Blogs: The Beijing Handshake: Israel as the Absent Partner

As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping shake hands on the steps of the Great Hall of the People, the country with arguably the most at stake is not in the room. The Beijing summit, ostensibly about tariffs and soybeans, is really about something far more consequential: who underwrites the resolution of the Iran war, and at what price. For Israel, the answer to that question is existential.

The Negotiation Israel Isn’t In

Since February 28, when US and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury and killed Supreme Leader Khamenei, the Trump administration has played both sides — threatening to resume bombing if Tehran refuses terms, while simultaneously courting Beijing as a potential mediator. Trump benefits politically whether the war ends through coercion or diplomacy. But Israel holds no such flexibility. It is exposed to every outcome yet present in none of the negotiations now unfolding in Beijing.

The underlying prize is the Strait of Hormuz. With shipping at roughly five per cent of pre-war levels and Iran retaining an estimated seventy per cent of its mobile missile launchers, the strait remains the world’s most consequential chokepoint. Trump needs it open to arrest spiralling US petrol prices and halt his plummeting approval ratings before the 2026 midterms. Xi needs it open because China’s export-led growth model cannot absorb a prolonged energy shock. Both leaders have converging interests. Neither has Israel’s interests as a priority.

The Taiwan-for-Hormuz Bargain

The logic of any deal in Beijing runs along predictable lines. If China leans on Tehran to reopen Hormuz, Washington may need to offer concessions on Taiwan — reduced arms sales, softer rhetoric, or a recalibration of the Indo-Pacific posture. For Israel, this is not a neutral exchange. Every degree of American strategic bandwidth redirected toward managing a Taiwan accommodation is a degree subtracted from the Middle Eastern theatre where Israel’s security architecture depends on US commitment.

The US war in Iran has already cost $29 billion and counting, with estimates projecting a total burden exceeding one trillion dollars. American military assets are stretched across the Gulf, with the Pentagon simultaneously maintaining a naval blockade of Iranian ports and attempting — then pausing — Operation Project Freedom to escort merchant shipping. If Beijing extracts a Taiwan concession, the gravitational pull of US grand strategy shifts further toward the Pacific, leaving Israel as the residual claimant on a shrinking pool of American attention.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already publicly called on China to intervene, urging Beijing to “step up with some diplomacy and get the Iranians to open the strait.” When a US Treasury Secretary outsources Middle East crisis management to Beijing, Israel should take notice.

Jerusalem Knows — and Is Already Moving

To its credit, the Netanyahu government has not been passive. Israeli sources have told CNN of deep concern that Trump will “grow tired of talks and cut a deal — any deal — with last-minute concessions” that leave Iran’s nuclear programme partially intact while bypassing ballistic missiles and proxy networks. Netanyahu himself declared on 60 Minutes last Sunday that the war is “not over,” insisting that enriched uranium must still be removed and enrichment sites dismantled.

Behind the scenes, Jerusalem has been piecing together backchannel diplomacy through intelligence gathered from Pakistan, Qatar, and Iranian interlocutors. Reports of a secret Netanyahu visit to the UAE during the war — denied by Abu Dhabi, which insisted its Abraham Accords ties with Israel “are not based on secrecy or clandestine arrangements” — suggest a Gulf outreach effort running in parallel to Washington’s overtures to Beijing.

Yet backchannels are not the same as a seat at the table. Israel’s diplomatic efforts remain reactive and bilateral, while the architecture being constructed in Beijing is multilateral and, for Israel, structurally inhospitable.

A Decapitated Regime, an Intact Threat

The war has degraded Iran’s leadership and nuclear infrastructure but unleashed cascading instabilities that Israel must now manage with diminishing American focus. Iran’s intelligence services are sending threatening text messages to Israeli citizens, attempting recruitment and intimidation. Hezbollah’s chief Naim Qassem has ruled out disarmament as part of any negotiations with Israel. Qatar accuses Tehran of weaponising Hormuz against Gulf states, while Kuwait has arrested alleged IRGC operatives planning hostile operations on its territory.

Iran, though stripped of its supreme leader, remains a distributed threat — its missile capability substantially intact, its proxy networks operational, and its capacity for asymmetric disruption undiminished. US intelligence assessments confirm that Iran has restored access to thirty of thirty-three missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz. The war has not neutralised Iran. It has dispersed the threat while simultaneously creating the conditions under which Washington may trade away its commitment to managing it.

Xi’s Multilateral Architecture

In April, Xi proposed a four-point plan for Middle East peace and stability — characteristically vague, characteristically multilateral, and characteristically designed to position China as a responsible stakeholder while constraining American unilateralism. The same month, China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Hormuz. Beijing’s preferred architecture is one in which it brokers outcomes, accrues diplomatic capital, and sets conditions — none of which align with Israel’s need for bilateral security guarantees anchored in Washington.

Wang Yi hosted Iran’s foreign minister in Beijing last week. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected in the Chinese capital days after Trump departs. Beijing is constructing a diplomatic sequence in which it sits at the centre of every conversation — Washington, Tehran, Moscow — while Jerusalem stands outside each one.

Beyond Backchannels

Israel’s Gulf outreach and intelligence backchannels are necessary but insufficient. What Beijing clarifies is that the Iran war is becoming a US-China negotiation about Iran, with Israel progressively marginalised from the diplomatic architecture that will determine the conflict’s resolution. Netanyahu’s insistence that the war is “not over” may be strategically correct, but it means nothing if the terms of its conclusion are written in a room where Israel has no voice.

The most consequential step Jerusalem can take is counterintuitive: engage Beijing directly. Israel has spent decades cultivating economic ties with China — in technology, agriculture, and infrastructure — while carefully subordinating those ties to the American alliance. The Beijing summit inverts that calculus. If China is going to be a broker in the Middle East’s post-war order, Israel cannot afford to treat it solely as a trade partner to be managed at Washington’s request. A direct Israeli channel to Beijing on security matters — uncomfortable as it would be for both Jerusalem and Washington — may be the only way to ensure that whatever emerges from the Great Hall of the People does not come at Israel’s expense.

The handshake in Beijing is warm. The smiles are broad. But the partner who isn’t at the table is the one who pays the price.