From Iron Dome To T-DOME: Israel’s Taiwan Ties Alarm China

By Uriel Araujo

Israel’s expanding ties with Taiwan, particularly in missile defence, are quietly reshaping regional geopolitics and alarming Beijing. In this context, even small defence transfers could undermine years of careful diplomatic calibration.

Israeli-Taiwanese cooperation, long discreet and underreported, is now moving into far more sensitive terrain. Recent reports indicate that Israeli know-how has been quietly feeding into Taiwan’s emerging missile-defence architecture, the so-called “T-DOME,” a system explicitly inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome. As a matter of fact, this development has already triggered a blunt diplomatic rebuke from Beijing, raising uncomfortable questions about Israel’s long-standing balancing act between rival global powers.

A detailed account of this growing cooperation comes from Nadia Helmy, Visiting Senior Researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), who notes that Chinese intelligence agencies have detected expanding Israeli assistance to Taiwan’s missile shield, particularly in radar integration, command-and-control architecture, and layered interception concepts. According to Helmy, Beijing views this cooperation not as an isolated commercial exchange but as a strategic signal, thereby crossing a political red line.

Taiwan’s T-DOME project is ambitious enough. Taipei plans to spend over USD 40 billion on a multi-layered air and missile defence system combining indigenous technology with foreign expertise, drawing lessons from Israel’s battlefield experience.

What makes the situation more delicate is not simply the technology itself but the political choreography surrounding it. Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister reportedly made a secret trip to Israel in December 2025 to discuss defence cooperation, a visit confirmed by multiple outlets. Israeli lawmakers have also travelled to Taiwan, prompting a formal condemnation from China’s embassy in Israel.

There is a context to such moves. Taiwan’s political discourse has increasingly framed Israel as both a security model and a civilizational reference point. One may recall that Taiwanese officials have even invoked biblical imagery when criticizing authoritarianism, explicitly citing Israel as an example. Meanwhile, pro-Israel lobbying networks linked to AIPAC have been expanding their presence in Taiwan, a fact documented but rarely discussed in mainstream Western media.

Israel, for its part, has historically prided itself on its ability to balance competing global relationships. Thus far, it has managed to maintain workable ties with Russia and Ukraine simultaneously, for instance, while also navigating relations with both the US and China.

Be as it may, Taiwan represents a different category of sensitivity altogether. Unlike commercial technology transfers or infrastructure investments, missile defence cooperation touches the core of China’s security concerns. Suffice to say, Beijing’s reaction has been measured rather than escalatory, but unmistakably firm nonetheless. In any case, from China’s perspective, Israeli involvement in Taiwan’s air defence is not neutral, regardless of how it is framed in Tel Aviv.

Some analysts, such as geopolitical expert Sergio Restelli, have already warned that this (and other developments) could mark the end of Israel’s careful balancing with China.

Others argue that Israel is simply responding to pressure from Washington, especially under the Trump administration, which has doubled down on strategic competition with China while encouraging allies to “choose sides.” I’ve written before about how the Trump administration has been pressuring, “sidelining” and “leveraging” the Jewish State in a number ways, including through its Gaza Plan, apparently as part of an effort to rebalance the complex US-Israeli relationship.

What is often overlooked is that China has, until now, shown considerable restraint in its dealings with Israel, even during periods of regional escalation in the Middle East.

For example, despite repeated escalations in Gaza since October 2023, Beijing neither downgraded diplomatic relations nor imposed bilateral sanctions, but rather avoided personalized or inflammatory rhetoric, and kept its criticism largely confined to multilateral forums; this despite the fact that several countries in the Global South did downgrade ties and that public opinion in China strongly favours the Palestinian cause.

This calibrated posture suggests that the Asian superpower has treated Israel as a complex but manageable partner. Such restraint should not be taken for granted, though. Blatantly inserting Israeli defence expertise onto Taiwan’s defence matters risks transforming a manageable disagreement into a kind of structural rift.

Domestically, the Netanyahu government may calculate that closer ties with Taiwan play well with certain ideological constituencies and reinforce Israel’s alignment with the US strategic camp. Yet internationally, the cost could be a degree of isolation significant enough to outweigh any symbolic gains. This is especially true at a time when Israel is already under intense scrutiny over its military campaign in Gaza (with accusations of genocide)  and regional instability.

Meanwhile, Taiwan continues to cultivate parliamentary friendship groups with Israel and deepen technological cooperation, including civilian sectors such as semiconductors and cybersecurity. These areas are far less controversial and could, in theory, sustain bilateral ties without provoking regional backlash. The problem arises when military cooperation becomes impossible to deny.

Thus, Israel finds itself at a crossroads. It can continue to stretch the logic of strategic ambiguity, or accept that no balancing act is indefinitely sustainable. With a Trump-led US pushing allies toward clearer alignment and China signalling firm red lines, Israel is no longer operating in a gray zone.

In the end, the question is not whether Israel has the right to cooperate with Taiwan, but whether doing so in such a manner is strategically prudent. The hard truth is that, in this case, even limited defence transfers can carry outsized geopolitical consequences. Whether Tel Aviv recalibrates or doubles down remains to be seen.

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Voice of East.

Categories: Analysis, Geopolitics, International Affairs

Tags: China, Gaza, Geopolitics, Global South, Iron Dome, Israel, Palestine, USA