The Taiwan Strait -- A History of Crises

The harbor on Taiwan's Nangan island in the Matsu islands with a view of Fujian province, China, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)
The harbor on Taiwan's Nangan island in the Matsu islands with a view of Fujian province, China, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)
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The Taiwan Strait -- A History of Crises

The harbor on Taiwan's Nangan island in the Matsu islands with a view of Fujian province, China, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)
The harbor on Taiwan's Nangan island in the Matsu islands with a view of Fujian province, China, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)

Ever since Communist China and Taiwan broke away from each other at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the waterway separating them has been a geopolitical flashpoint.

The Taiwan Strait, just 130 kilometers (80 miles) wide at its narrowest point, is a major international shipping channel and all that lies between democratic, self-ruled Taiwan and its giant neighbor.

With Beijing conducting a third day of military drills around the island, here is a look at the major China-Taiwan crises since 1949:

First Taiwan Strait Crisis

Mao Zedong's communist forces successfully pushed out Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, who relocated to Taiwan, at the end of the Chinese Civil War.

The two rivals -- the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland and the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan -- stood on either side of the strait.

The First Taiwan Strait Crisis broke out in August 1954 when the Nationalists placed thousands of troops on Taiwan-ruled Kinmen and Matsu, two small islands just a few miles from the mainland.

China responded with artillery bombardment of the islands and the successful capture of the Yijiangshan Islands, about 400 kilometers north of Taipei.

The crisis was eventually defused but brought China and the United States to the brink of direct conflict.

Second Taiwan Strait Crisis

Fighting broke out again in 1958 as Mao's forces conducted an intense bombardment of Kinmen and Matsu in another bid to dislodge Nationalist troops.

Concerned that the loss of the islands might lead to the collapse of the Nationalists and Beijing's eventual takeover of Taiwan, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered his military to escort and resupply their Taiwanese allies.

The United States at one point even briefly considered deploying nuclear weapons against China.

Unable to take the offshore islands or bombard the Nationalists into submission, Beijing announced a ceasefire.

Mao's forces would still intermittently shell Kinmen up to 1979, but an otherwise tense stalemate set in.

Third Taiwan Strait Crisis

It would be another 37 years before the next crisis.

In the intervening decades, China and Taiwan both changed considerably.

China remained Communist Party-controlled following Mao's death but began a period of reform and opening up to the world.

Taiwan began shaking off Chiang's authoritarian years and evolved into a progressive democracy, with many embracing a distinctly Taiwanese -- not Chinese -- identity.

Tensions exploded again in 1995 when China began test-firing missiles in the waters around Taiwan to protest against a visit by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to his alma mater in the United States.

Beijing loathed Lee because he favored Taiwan declaring itself an independent state.

Further missile tests were carried out a year later as Taiwan held its first direct presidential election.

The display backfired.

The United States sent two aircraft carrier groups to push China into backing down and Lee won the election by a large margin.

A year later, Newt Gingrich became the first US House speaker to visit Taiwan.

Largest-ever exercises

It took over 25 years before the next House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, went to Taiwan.

Following Nancy Pelosi's visit in August 2022, China unleashed its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan, sending warships, missiles and fighter jets around the island.

Taipei condemned the drills and missile tests as preparation for an invasion.

Less than a year later, Tsai arrived in Los Angeles to meet Pelosi's successor, Kevin McCarthy, setting off another round of Chinese military exercises.

Analysts had initially said that Tsai meeting McCarthy in the United States may placate Beijing and avert a military show of strength.

But on Saturday, China began three days of military drills it described as "a stern warning" to Taiwan over the meeting.

The drills included simulated strikes on the island. On Monday, China was scheduled to conduct live-fire drills.



What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
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What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)

Iran and the United States will hold talks Saturday in Oman, their third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

The talks follow a first round held in Muscat, Oman, where the two sides spoke face to face. They then met again in Rome last weekend before this scheduled meeting again in Muscat.

Trump has imposed new sanctions on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting the country. He has repeatedly suggested military action against Iran remained a possibility, while emphasizing he still believed a new deal could be reached by writing a letter to Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to jumpstart these talks.

Khamenei has warned Iran would respond to any attack with an attack of its own.

Here’s what to know about the letter, Iran’s nuclear program and the tensions that have stalked relations between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 revolution.

Why did Trump write the letter? Trump dispatched the letter to Khamenei on March 5, then gave a television interview the next day in which he acknowledged sending it. He said: “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’”

Since returning to the White House, the president has been pushing for talks while ratcheting up sanctions and suggesting a military strike by Israel or the US could target Iranian nuclear sites.

A previous letter from Trump during his first term drew an angry retort from the supreme leader.

But Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term led to face-to-face meetings, though no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental US.

How did the first round go? Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, hosted the first round of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The two men met face to face after indirect talks and immediately agreed to this second round in Rome.

Witkoff later made a television appearance in which he suggested 3.67% enrichment for Iran could be something the countries could agree on. But that’s exactly the terms set by the 2015 nuclear deal struck under US President Barack Obama, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew America.

Witkoff hours later issued a statement underlining something: “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal.” Araghchi and Iranian officials have latched onto Witkoff’s comments in recent days as a sign that America was sending it mixed signals about the negotiations.

Yet the Rome talks ended up with the two sides agreeing to starting expert-level talks this Saturday. Analysts described that as a positive sign, though much likely remains to be agreed before reaching a tentative deal.

Why does Iran’s nuclear program worry the West? Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials increasingly threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 60%, the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 pounds). The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s program put its stockpile at 8,294.4 kilograms (18,286 pounds) as it enriches a fraction of it to 60% purity.

US intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, has warned in a televised interview that his country has the capability to build nuclear weapons, but it is not pursuing it and has no problem with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections. However, he said if the US or Israel were to attack Iran over the issue, the country would have no choice but to move toward nuclear weapon development.

“If you make a mistake regarding Iran’s nuclear issue, you will force Iran to take that path, because it must defend itself,” he said.

Why are relations so bad between Iran and the US? Iran was once one of the US’s top allies in the Middle East under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA had fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. The revolution followed, led by Khomeini, and created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the US Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the US severed. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s saw the US back Saddam Hussein. The “Tanker War” during that conflict saw the US launch a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea, while the US later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the American military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the US have see-sawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, with relations peaking when Tehran made the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Middle East that persist today.