The Taiwan Strait: Crucial Waterway and Military Flashpoint

This photo taken and released by the Taiwan Coast Guard on October 14, 2024 shows a Taiwan Coast Guard personnel using binoculars on a patrol ship off Pengjia Islet (Keelung) while pointing at a Chinese Coast Guard ship sailing in the distance outside Taiwan's territorial waters. (Handout / Taiwan Coast Guard /AFP)
This photo taken and released by the Taiwan Coast Guard on October 14, 2024 shows a Taiwan Coast Guard personnel using binoculars on a patrol ship off Pengjia Islet (Keelung) while pointing at a Chinese Coast Guard ship sailing in the distance outside Taiwan's territorial waters. (Handout / Taiwan Coast Guard /AFP)
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The Taiwan Strait: Crucial Waterway and Military Flashpoint

This photo taken and released by the Taiwan Coast Guard on October 14, 2024 shows a Taiwan Coast Guard personnel using binoculars on a patrol ship off Pengjia Islet (Keelung) while pointing at a Chinese Coast Guard ship sailing in the distance outside Taiwan's territorial waters. (Handout / Taiwan Coast Guard /AFP)
This photo taken and released by the Taiwan Coast Guard on October 14, 2024 shows a Taiwan Coast Guard personnel using binoculars on a patrol ship off Pengjia Islet (Keelung) while pointing at a Chinese Coast Guard ship sailing in the distance outside Taiwan's territorial waters. (Handout / Taiwan Coast Guard /AFP)

China launched fighter jets and other aircraft over the Taiwan Strait on Monday as part of military drills aimed at sending a "warning" to the self-ruled island.

Here, AFP looks at the critical waterway and growing military flashpoint:

- Where is the Taiwan Strait? -

The strait separates the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian from the main island of Taiwan, home to around 23 million people.

At its narrowest point, just 130 kilometers (about 80 miles) of windswept water separates the two major landmasses, and several outlying Taiwanese islands -- including Kinmen and Matsu -- lie just a few kilometers from the Chinese coastline.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since Mao Zedong's communist army won a civil war and sent the opposition nationalist forces fleeing across the strait in 1949.

- Why is it important? -

The strait is a critical artery for global shipping through which a huge volume of trade passes every day.

Around $2.45 trillion of goods -- more than a fifth of global maritime trade -- transited the strait in 2022, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

Taiwan plays an outsized role in the global economy thanks to producing over 90 percent of the world's most advanced computing chips, used in everything from smartphones to cutting-edge military equipment.

Analysts say a Chinese invasion would deal a catastrophic blow to these supply chains.

More minor disruptions, such as a blockade of the island, would cause costly shipping cancellations and diversions that would impact worldwide consumers.

"In the event of a long conflict over Taiwan, financial markets would tank, trade would shrivel, and supply chains would freeze, plunging the global economy into a tailspin," Robert A. Manning, a China expert at Washington's Stimson Center, wrote this year.

A report by the Rhodium Group estimated that a blockade of the island could cost firms dependent on Taiwan's chips $1.6 trillion in revenue annually.

An invasion would also endanger Taiwan's way of life, embodied by its democratic freedoms and boisterous elections.

It would also risk a wider conflict because the United States, while not recognizing Taiwan diplomatically, has an agreement to help the island defend itself.

- What has China announced? -

Beijing said that it had launched military exercises called "Joint Sword-2024B" in areas to the north, south and east of Taiwan.

The armed forces deployed fighter jets, bombers and warships in the strait, and also simulated a rocket strike, state media said.

The military also said it had deployed an aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, to "strike on maritime and ground targets in the waters and airspace to the east" of the island.

The coast guard said four fleets were conducting "inspections" around the Taiwanese mainland and disclosed other patrols near Matsu.

The drills "test the joint operations capabilities of the theater command's troops" while sending a "stern warning to the separatist acts of 'Taiwan Independence' forces", according to Chinese authorities.

Taiwan has condemned the actions as "irrational and provocative", and the US has called them "unwarranted".

- Has this happened before? -

In late May, three days after the inauguration of President Lai Ching-te, China launched Joint Sword-2024A, an apparent precursor to the latest drills.

The Chinese military also held three days of drills encircling Taiwan in April last year in response to Lai's predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, meeting with then US Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

And in 2022, Beijing launched over a week of maneuvers after McCarthy's predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan.

Several major crises punctuated the preceding decades, most recently in 1995-6, when China conducted missile tests around Taiwan.

It is not yet clear how the drills announced on Monday compare in scale and intensity to those of previous years.



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."