The United States and Israel did not lose to Iran on the battlefield. American and Israeli strikes damaged key facilities and removed senior operatives. Yet the April 2026 ceasefire and the subsequent memorandum of understanding left Tehran’s regime, its nuclear program, and its missile arsenal intact while unlocking nearly $344 billion in reconstruction funds, access to frozen assets, and sanctions relief. Iran turned the Strait of Hormuz into a weapon and converted endurance into leverage. The mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps showed that a weaker power can prevail by exhausting a stronger adversary’s political will rather than destroying its forces.
Beijing watched and learned. Now, China does not require an amphibious invasion of Taiwan to achieve its objectives. A quarantine or blockade using mines, DF-21D and DF-26 barrages, cyberattacks, and maritime militia forces would sever supply chains for advanced semiconductors, AI, defense systems, and electronics. Taiwan produces over 90% of advanced logic chips and 60% of contract manufacturing. The economic shock could exceed $10 trillion and trigger a 5% to 10% contraction in global GDP. Thus, Beijing could bring Taiwan under its control without firing a single shot.
The Chinese military built the tools for this test. Anti-access missiles, naval and coast guard forces, cyber units, and economic leverage allow Beijing to operate below the threshold of war, paralyze American decision-making, and divide Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea through tailored pressure. Fracturing America’s alliances is not a side effect of Beijing’s strategy but its central objective.
Washington’s bureaucracy treats Taiwan as five separate portfolios, while Beijing sees one campaign. Hence, three corrections are required.
First, the president must appoint a special presidential envoy for Taiwan within the National Security Council, with authority to override standard bureaucratic processes and to report directly to the national security adviser and the president. This envoy must force prioritization of Taiwan across the Pentagon, State, Commerce, and Treasury Departments and maintain continuous oversight of arms deliveries, prepositioned stocks, sanctions planning, industrial mobilization, and allied coordination. When agencies resist, the envoy must cut through bureaucratic resistance rather than wait for consensus — because a Taiwan crisis will not wait.
Second, Washington must arm Taiwan to survive the opening phase of any Chinese blockade until American and allied resolve can harden. Mobile anti-ship missiles, layered air defenses, unmanned systems, resilient communications, and prepositioned stocks of fuel and ammunition, along with coastal defenses, must already be on the island when Beijing moves. Taiwan’s reserves and civil defense cannot wait until the crisis begins. Weapons delivered after the fighting starts will not deter China — they will only record the price of earlier American hesitation.
WILL CHINA MIRROR IRAN’S HORMUZ BLOCKADE STRATEGY?
Third, the U.S. must lock in allied commitments before any crisis erupts. Japan, the Philippines, Australia, South Korea, and India must precommit to defined roles in access, intelligence, logistics, and economic countermeasures. Washington should establish automatic secondary sanctions on entities enabling a Chinese quarantine, accelerate allied semiconductor production, coordinate maritime insurance and shipping, and align strategic energy reserves. Beijing must understand that any attempt to fracture this coalition will trigger immediate and severe costs — and that hesitation by any ally will carry consequences of its own.
The Strait of Hormuz proved that a revisionist power can weaponize a chokepoint to coerce the world. China’s bloody communist regime is preparing to apply the same model in the Taiwan Strait with far greater force. Washington must deny Beijing this capability before China, like Iran, normalizes chokepoint extortion and proves the U.S. cannot prevent revisionist powers from dominating critical maritime geography.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the IDF special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees, a medical degree, and is completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C., area.