China Power | Diplomacy | East Asia

How Taiwan Views the US War With Iran

The Lai administration immediately sought to align itself with the United States, while debate in Taiwan rages over what the strikes mean for cross-strait dynamics.

After joint Israeli-U.S. military strikes on Iran sparked Iranian retaliation that has impacted every country in the Middle East, Taiwan was quick to register the large shift in global geopolitics. 

The most immediate concern was the safety of Taiwanese in the region. The Lai administration stressed a speedy response by diplomatic representatives of Taiwan abroad to maintain the safety of Taiwanese citizens in the Middle East. Thirty-eight Taiwanese citizens in Israel were evacuated to Jordan, while three Taiwanese in Iran evacuated to Turkiye. 

However, the Lai administration stressed that the approximately 3,000 Taiwanese who are long-term residents of Middle Eastern countries – concentrated primarily in Saudi Arabia – are safe and that there were no plans to conduct mass evacuations. 

Over 2,000 Taiwanese travelers were affected by flight cancellations amid the growing conflict. Travel alerts for Iran and Israel were raised to red, the highest level, while those of other Middle Eastern countries were raised from yellow to orange. 

In terms of geopolitical messaging, the Lai administration immediately sought to position itself as aligned with the United States. The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized “indiscriminate” attacks by Iran against other countries. Comments by Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu framed the U.S. and Israel’s actions as driven by a desire to “eliminate terrorism,” and emphasized that Taiwan saw the U.S. and Israel as allies. The suggestion, then, is that Taiwan supported the U.S. strikes. 

This should not come as a surprise. Since 1949, Taiwan has relied on the United States as a security guarantor in the event of an invasion by the People’s Republic of China, and that remains true today. The Lai administration has sought to shore up the public credibility of the United States domestically, because concerns that it is an unreliable ally decrease the willingness of Taiwanese to resist military threats from China. Consequently, Beijing has itself put a great deal of energy into disinformation tactics to sow doubt about American reliability, as part of what is termed “U.S.-skeptic discourse.”

Likewise, the Lai administration has proven quite willing to back Israel on other occasions. Reports indicated Taiwan originally planned to fund a medical facility in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, before backing away from the idea due to international criticism. In public comments, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung has suggested that Israel is a strong ally of Taiwan, while condemning Palestine as an ally of China that accepted the “One China principle.” 

Efforts to shore up ties with Israel are driven by not only a desire to appeal to the United States through support of Israel, but also Israel’s prowess in drones and anti-missile defense systems. A signature initiative of the Lai administration is a “T-Dome” system modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome, and drones used as part of asymmetric warfare tactics could play a key role in fending off a much larger opponent, such as China. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, after the outbreak of hostilities, Taiwan’s representative office in Israel announced a $180,000 donation for food packages and other humanitarian products to the city of Beit Shemesh.

Taiwan has seen an economic hit since the Israeli-U.S. strikes began, with stocks down due to global uncertainty. Global gas prices are quickly rising, leading to the implementation of gas rationing in neighboring countries, but the Lai administration has emphasized that it has sufficient liquified natural gas (LNG) supplies for the next month. The government has said that if the conflict continues, contingency measures are in place, and gas rationing will not be required. The Lai administration claims this is the fruit of successful efforts to diversify Taiwan’s gas supply to avoid reliance on the Middle East. 

Efforts to diversify LNG supply are likely to see a further boost given the ongoing........

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