China, Israel and Iran

Whoever stands with Palestine gains the trust of billions

As we learned last week, the PLA planned¹ an operation that took out a US-sponsored terrorist group in a neighboring country…without violating UN statutes. Then Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed mutual defense treaties primarily because “Saudi Arabia, like most MENA countries, has terrorists, too,” and the Kingdom wanted the technology and expertise behind the PLAN’s successful raid. And who needs that technology for its own domestic terrorists more than oil rich Iran.

Pakistan’s other neighbor

Oil-rich Iran is, like Saudi Arabia, a Muslim nation plagued by US-, British- and Israeli-sponsored terrorists. But though it’s under attack from Israel, Iran did ten times² more physical, emotional and geopolitical damage to Israel than it suffered in their last exchange.

It proved it can hit any target, anywhere and retains escalatory dominance, too: even its older missiles bypassed Israel’s ruinously expensive anti-missile defenses with pinpoint accuracy (and its AAAM is a generation ahead of Israel’s). Iran can destroy Israel’s water supply in 45 minutes, and Israel can do nothing to prevent that. Nor can it prevent Iran destroying its nuclear weapons center, Dimona.

Cui Bono?

Presidents Netanyahu and Zelensky, like most European leaders share a motive for prolonging their wars: they become targets for lawsuits and bullets once they lose office.

The $1 trillion they collectively borrowed to finance their wars comes due when they lose – and Ukraine’s chief tormentor and biggest borrower, Britain, will suffer first and worst. Tiny Israel borrowed $15 billion for defensive measures during its twelve-day war. Damages and losses add another $5 billion.

Reputational damage

We’ve all seen little boys used as targets and legless little girls asking if their ‘legs will grow back?’. Now the world knows that they’re as wicked as history portrays them.

80% of them support the seventy-year genocide, the worst in recorded history, and people are realizing that what they’re doing to Palestinians, they’ll do to us. Even Tucker Carlson is publicly asking why “a foreign leader bosses the US President around? Where is that in the Constitution?”

Winning hearts and minds

China played the hegemony game for thousands of years before Xunzi (250 BC) explained their style: “Moral leaders whose own states always act correctly will unfailingly attain primacy. States wishing to exercise humane authority must be the first to respect the norms they advocate, because leaders of high ethical reputation and great administrative ability are attractive to other states and, since the domestic determines the international, winning hearts and minds is more important than winning territory”.

China supported Palestinian independence until 1998, when the PLO signed it away, forcing China to adhere to UN regulations on state-to-state relations. BUT the UN’s recent judgement that Israel is committing genocide in Palestine unleashed the Dragon.

As Thomas Keith observed, the collapse of Israel’s relationship with China is no longer a quiet undercurrent, it is an open fracture. Hebrew media now admit what Washington tried to obscure: Beijing has turned decisively against the Zionist project, not out of expediency, but because Palestine has become the moral and geopolitical litmus test of our era. Israeli exports to China have plummeted 28% in the first half of 2025. What Tel Aviv frames as “economic friction” is, in truth, Beijing’s refusal to normalize trade with a regime that wages genocide against Palestinians. Where the United States shields Israel with weapons and vetoes, China has aligned itself with the broader Global South, openly charging that the siege of Gaza violates the most basic norms of sovereignty and human dignity.

Israel’s doctrine has always depended on monopoly – over U.S. weapons, over Western finance, over narrative framing in global media.

Cybersecurity, academic exchange, and joint technology ventures are unraveling. Israeli universities, once eager to host Chinese scholars, now find doors closing. Zionist cyber firms, long dependent on dual-use contracts, are now viewed in Beijing as extensions of an occupation apparatus. This isn’t “economic leverage”, it is the steady withdrawal of legitimacy from a colonial project.

You will fall to pieces

The roots of this realignment lie in China’s alliance with Iran. Since the 2021 comprehensive partnership agreement, Beijing has been Tehran’s economic lifeline, purchasing 91% of its oil exports in 2023 alone, worth over $9 billion. By 2025, China joined Iran and Russia in joint naval drills, openly contesting U.S.-Israeli dominance at sea. When Israel’s air defense grid faltered under Iranian strikes, Chinese technical support helped Tehran turn “damaged systems” into functional warnings for the next round. China’s alignment with Iran and its sympathy for the Palestinian cause shatter that monopoly. Beijing does not just sell oil or invest in ports; it provides the political gravity that allows the Islamic world and the wider South to stand upright against the U.S.-Zionist axis.

The fury in Tel Aviv shows the stakes. When MK Boaz Toporovsky visited Taiwan, the Chinese embassy in Tel Aviv issued a blunt warning: keep challenging One China and “you will fall to pieces.” Zionist media outlets, accustomed to dictating terms, now receive Chinese protest letters over even the titles given to Taiwan’s representatives. This is not “posturing.” It is China wielding sovereignty language with the same firmness it extends to Palestine: there is no room for colonial doublespeak.

Beijing understands that Palestine is not only a cause but a mirror: whoever stands with it gains the trust of billions; whoever stands against it exposes themselves as agents of empire. Israel now finds itself isolated, its exports declining, its influence shrinking, while China cements its role as both partner to sovereign nations and voice for the dispossessed.

The war has done what years of diplomacy could not: forced the world to choose. And in that choice, China has placed itself firmly on the side of liberation, while Israel has collapsed into the open embrace of decline.

Stay tuned..

More from Thomas Keith.

1. “Mounted” reflects the fact that China kept its gloves clean from beginning to end.

2. On June 15, a Fateh-110 ballistic missile slammed into the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, obliterating two research buildings and ~45-50 labs, vaporizing irreplaceable equipment, cell cultures, and data from cancer, biotech, and quantum projects (EU-funded ones among them). The $500M+ in losses halted work for hundreds of scientists, with restoration dragging into 2026 despite a $26M Mandel Foundation infusion. Concurrently, IRGC missiles targeted military/intelligence nerve centers: the Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv took direct hits, compromising surveillance ops; the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate and Command Center (adjacent to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba) suffered structural breaches, with 3D-released footage showing collapsed command bunkers and disrupted signals intelligence. Overall, Iran’s strikes hit 20+ sites, causing $2-3B in damages, 12 civilian deaths (from shrapnel/debris in populated areas like Jerusalem/Tel Aviv), and strained Iron Dome to 85% saturation, depleting $4B in interceptors.Israel’s opening salvos? Targeted and restrained: 200+ airstrikes crippled Natanz/Fordow centrifuges (delaying Iran’s program 1-2 years) and IRGC bases, but avoided urban centers, limiting deaths to ~150 (mostly military) and infrastructure hits to $1B—mostly repairable military assets. No equivalent to Weizmann’s “brain drain” or HQ blackouts. The 10x gap: Iran’s attacks erased decades of R&D (Weizmann’s output = 10% of Israel’s patents) and paralyzed intel (Mossad ops down 30% per leaks), while Israel’s degraded capabilities without existential gut-punches. Quantified: Iran’s hits = 10x the square footage destroyed (e.g., 100,000 sqm labs/HQ vs. Iran’s 10,000 sqm facilities) and 10x the long-term economic drag (Israel’s GDP dip 1.2% Q3 2025 vs. Iran’s 0.3%). Emotional Damage: Collective Devastation vs. Controlled ResolveThe human cost amplified the asymmetry—Israel’s psyche fractured under live-streamed annihilation of its “scientific crown jewel” and security bastions. At Weizmann, 300+ researchers “reeled” from lost theses and specimens, with psychologists reporting 55% acute grief/PTSD rates, evoking “a second October 7” for survivors watching labs burn in real-time footage. Nationwide, sirens over Tel Aviv/Jerusalem triggered mass evacuations (1M+ sheltered), spiking national anxiety 4x (per Haaretz polls: 62% felt “existential vulnerability” vs. 15% pre-war), deepening Gaza fatigue and fueling protests against Netanyahu (approval at 28%). Arab Israelis reported 70% heightened fear, exacerbating divides.