Ernst David Bergmann, the founder of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, arrived in Taiwan for a seven-day mission in 1965. His meetings with former President Chiang Kai-shek and then-Defense Minister Chiang Ching-kuo at the Lalu Sun Moon Lake Hotel yielded Plan Hsin Chu. The initiative included a detailed nuclear blueprint of Israel’s alleged Dimona reactor complex: a heavy-water reactor, a production plant, and a plutonium separation facility. As international isolation deepened in the 1970s, this bilateral blueprint transformed into a clandestine trilateral nuclear axis that incorporated apartheid South Africa. Drawing upon these covert networks, General Hau Pei-tsun even ordered the military in 1985 to prepare for rapid nuclear breakout capability—a historical template for survival that both Taipei and Jerusalem must resurrect today.
Iranian customs documents approximately 1,300 air shipments of dual-use drone and missile components ... from Chinese entities to Iran’s defense ministry in the first half of 2026.
However, intense American diplomatic pressure ended these efforts. After the Central Intelligence Agency exfiltrated leading scientist Chang Hsien-yi in January 1988, Taiwan surrendered its heavy water, turned off its reprocessing work, and shut down sensitive facilities in accordance with the demands of the Reagan administration. After recording roughly $850 million in direct arms transfers to Taiwan between 1980 and 1992, Israel halted its cooperation with Taiwan and turned to Beijing, seeking lucrative contracts. Unfortunately, these measures were unable to bring about Chinese geopolitical caution or end Beijing’s partnership with Tehran; Beijing simply expanded its dual-use infrastructures and Tehran developed its missile and drone programs.
Today, China’s support for Iran reverses the strategic arithmetic. Iranian customs documents approximately 1,300 air shipments of dual-use drone and missile components—GPS units, electric motors, aircraft-engine parts—from Chinese entities to Iran’s defense ministry in the first half of 2026. Consignments arrived on June 17, 2026, under a temporary ceasefire memorandum and continued in the following days, with more than a dozen additional loads valued at more than $6 million. Simultaneously, China absorbs the bulk of Iran’s sanctioned oil through its shadow fleet. Recent Kpler data from 2025 show roughly 1.7 million barrels per day of Iranian crude reaching Chinese buyers, with Hong Kong- and mainland-linked companies owning or crewing dozens of these vessels. These economic flows generate billions of dollars in hard currency that sustains Iranian military production aimed at Israel and its regional partners.
A latent Taiwanese nuclear capability would raise the expected costs of any People’s Liberation Army amphibious operation across the Taiwan Strait. This higher defensive cost would divert fiscal and political resources from Beijing’s other enduring security challenges and reduce China’s ability to sustain dual-use transfers to Tehran. Israel’s post-1956 nuclear decision, after its allies abandoned it at Suez, is an analogous strategic choice. Small states facing existential security threats cannot afford to outsource deterrence. Taipei faces an analogous risk if Washington prioritizes short-term stability over the wider balance of power.
To counter these growing threats, Jerusalem and Taipei should immediately execute three concrete strategic measures. First, the Jewish state and Taiwan must implement the “Sealed Latency Protocol.” Under this scheme, Israel would sell modular, factory-sealed fuel-cycle assemblies for secure underground emplacement at Taiwan’s research installations. Israel should also provide encrypted remote diagnostic software—which can maintain a verified breakout timeline of less than 120 days without actual weapons stockpiling—in return for total equity in Israeli advanced-materials firms and an upgrade to Jerusalem’s diplomatic strategic agenda in capitals that back Taipei.
A latent Taiwanese nuclear capability would raise the expected costs of any People’s Liberation Army amphibious operation across the Taiwan Strait.
Second, Israel and Taiwan must establish the “Dual-Use Forensics Exchange.” Taiwanese engineers would train at Israeli civilian nuclear-forensics and materials-characterization laboratories, while Jerusalem would receive real-time data feeds from Taipei’s monitoring of Beijing’s dual-use shipments through Asian ports. The two would create a closed intelligence loop to track the same supply chains now funneling into Iran.
Third, Jerusalem and Taipei must create the “Periphery Pact,” through which Taiwan would underwrite an Israeli-led consortium to produce AI-accelerated nuclear-weapon simulation and design packages and novel high-explosive lens technologies for indigenous Taiwanese production, while shifting its semiconductor and shipbuilding industries toward joint anti-ship and anti-air systems capable of countering both China’s amphibious assault capability and Iranian drone warfare.
Ultimately, these strategic steps will restore the balance first outlined during Bergmann’s 1965 visit—a vision that decades of bureaucratic risk aversion and misguided policy abandoned. Jerusalem and Taipei no longer can afford to let diplomatic timidity dictate their survival.
