标签： Asia

Less than one month after Israeli strikes targeted Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington D.C. for a high-stakes private meeting with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson in his Capitol Hill office. What has remained unreported until now, however, is the controversial materials Johnson shared with Netanyahu during their discussion: a two-part Bible study pamphlet produced by Capitol Ministries that repeats the ancient, widely discredited antisemitic blood libel of deicide — the false claim that all Jewish people bear collective responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

While the materials frame themselves as pro-Israel advocacy urging U.S. politicians to align with the Israeli government, they reiterate a deicide charge that has been rejected as baseless by all major world religious bodies for decades. The study, which was recycled from content first produced years earlier, was reposted in mid-June 2025 to build congressional and White House support for U.S. military intervention alongside Israel following Israel’s offensive against Iran.

Capitol Ministries, the organization that produces Bible study groups for members of the House, Senate, White House and U.S. governors, regularly repurposes older lessons to match current political events. The 2025 materials draw on text that dates as far back as 2011, when the guide first began warning about Iran’s nuclear program. Phrasing framing the study as a timely biblical primer for U.S. support for Israel has appeared in the document since at least October 2021, meaning the content was not newly written for the 2025 escalation. A 2011 note about Iran’s “nearly-enriched nuclear threat” also remained untouched in the revised pamphlet.

Over more than a decade, this recycled content has circulated among dozens of high-profile Republican leaders across the Trump administration and GOP-led Congress. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been closely affiliated with Capitol Ministries and its founders Ralph and Danielle Drollinger for more than a decade, describing the group in 2015 as a guiding force that encourages elected officials to align their governance and personal conduct with Christian theology. Current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also regularly participates in the group’s White House Bible study, the Pentagon confirmed in 2025.

Weeks after the study materials were circulated, then-President Donald Trump ordered three separate military strikes on Iranian nuclear targets in late June 2025. Netanyahu’s meeting with Johnson on Capitol Hill preceded his scheduled White House talks with Trump. Following their discussion, Netanyahu noted publicly that “First comes strength, then comes peace,” while Johnson released only a brief general statement about the meeting. Full details of the exchange only emerged in Capitol Ministries’ 2025 annual report, where Johnson acknowledged sharing the two-part Drollinger study titled “The Biblical Case for Defending Israel” with Netanyahu, and that the pair discussed the content at length before Netanyahu departed with a copy. Johnson called Capitol Ministries “an invaluable resource” that provides timely biblical insight that shapes both personal conduct and legislative decision-making for hundreds of members of Congress.

The first of Drollinger’s two study guides explicitly repeats the deicide claim, arguing that the Abrahamic Covenant only applies to the Christian Church “for a time” because of Israel’s “present apostasy, having executed the Messiah.” In a companion video for the second lesson, Drollinger doubles down on the claim, stating that Jews were “sidetracked” by God “because they crucified their messiah.” Johnson is listed alongside dozens of other Republican politicians as an official sponsor of the study materials.

Neither Johnson’s congressional office nor the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. responded to requests for comment or confirmation of the exchange. This revelation marks not the first controversy tied to Drollinger, who has previously made headlines for derogatory public remarks targeting women, Catholics and LGBTQ+ people. Nor is it Johnson’s first unreported act of faith-based diplomacy with major national security implications: his previously undisclosed meetings with a Ukrainian evangelical advocacy leader ultimately led him to support U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

The incident also shines a light on a long-running debate over antisemitic rhetoric in Congress surrounding deicide claims. In 2024, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was advancing the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify a legal definition of antisemitism that included labeling the collective deicide charge as antisemitic. Schumer warned that an unidentified Republican senator planned to introduce an amendment that would explicitly exempt deicide claims from the legal definition of antisemitism — meaning calling Jews “Christ-killers” would not be classified as a form of religious bigotry under federal policy.

Schumer approached Johnson, who had already shepherded the bill through the House, to ask for help attaching the antisemitism legislation to a must-pass military spending bill. This procedural move would have blocked the divisive deicide amendment from reaching a floor vote, which Schumer argued would embolden antisemitism across the United States. Johnson rejected Schumer’s request. In April 2025, reporting from The Forward identified Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana and a Capitol Ministries sponsor since 2013, as the lawmaker planning to introduce the amendment. Representative Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma ultimately voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act over its inclusion of deicide as an antisemitic claim, arguing that blaming Jews for the crucifixion is a “biblical and historical fact” and that the bill mischaracterized biblical text as bigotry. The bill collapsed after a flood of bipartisan amendments cost it the needed majority support.

Johnson only became an official sponsor of Drollinger’s House Bible study in May 2025, one month before he shared the Israel-focused study with Netanyahu. Just months earlier, senior leaders in the second Trump administration had revived the weekly White House cabinet Bible study run by Capitol Ministries. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, one of the leaders of the revived study, is currently facing a lawsuit for proselytizing to her non-religious staff. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, another key leader of the initiative, faced scrutiny during his 2017 confirmation hearing when he refused to reject the claim that non-Christians, including Jews, are “condemned” for not accepting Jesus as a savior.

There is no public evidence confirming whether Johnson’s policy positions are shaped by Drollinger’s teachings, or if he sponsors the Bible studies because their theology already aligns with his long-held personal beliefs. When asked in 2024 if he believed there was a biblical justification for U.S. support for Israel, Johnson confirmed his personal view that the Torah’s promise that God “will bless the nation that blesses Israel and curse the nation that curses Israel” is a core reason for his support, adding that faith adds a deeper layer to his already pragmatic support for the Middle Eastern democracy.

This position directly aligns with Drollinger’s core theology, as laid out in the study shared with Netanyahu. Drollinger argues that while Jews collectively committed deicide by killing Jesus — a claim that all major Christian denominations have formally renounced — God has only temporarily set the Jewish people aside, rather than voiding the original Abrahamic Covenant. Because of this, he argues, the promise of blessings for allies of Israel and curses for its enemies remains in effect, requiring Christian politicians to support Israel to receive divine favor. Drollinger also repeats other common antisemitic tropes in his materials, including claims that Jewish people are inherently “smart” and “good with money,” tropes that have been used to justify anti-Jewish persecution for centuries.

The irony of the moment is hard to overstate: Netanyahu himself has explicitly referenced the long history of antisemitic violence tied to the deicide myth, telling the United Nations years ago that “For centuries the Jewish people have been demonized with blood libels and charges of deicide.” The Anti-Defamation League similarly classifies the deicide claim as a dangerous antisemitic myth, noting that “the myth that Jews collectively murdered Jesus … has been used to justify violence against Jews for centuries. Historians as well as Christian leaders have agreed that the claim is baseless.” Multiple Jewish and secular advocacy groups condemned the 2025 Bible study for repeating the harmful slur.

Despite this, the incident offers a clear reminder that evangelical Christian theology shapes U.S. foreign policy in underreported ways. While many evangelical leaders are vocal supporters of Israel, that support is often tied to end-times theology that requires a sovereign state of Israel for Jesus Christ to return to Earth — even as that same theology perpetuates core antisemitic claims like deicide. Following the U.S. entry into the 2025 strikes on Iran, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation received reports from active-duty service members that military commanders were openly celebrating the strikes as a sign that the biblical End Times were imminent, with grinning leaders telling subordinates the attack fulfilled prophecies in the Book of Revelation.

Drollinger argues that his work does not create new pro-Israel beliefs among members of Congress and the cabinet, but rather reinforces existing predispositions rooted in their cultural Christian backgrounds, providing a formal biblical foundation for their policy positions. “We need to buoy the convictions of our members based upon Scriptural truths … so that, when push comes to shove, they know why they believe they’re pro-Israel: from what the Bible says,” he explained. In recent years, as congressional Democrats have increasingly broken with Israeli policy and voted in growing numbers against U.S. arms transfers to Israel, Drollinger has argued that the Republican Party’s alignment with biblical teaching makes their pro-Israel stance righteous, while the Democratic Party’s departure from Mosaic law will lead to its political ruin. Drollinger insists he does not advocate for Christian nationalism or theocracy, but simply wants elected officials to align all their policy decisions with what he frames as God’s will.

This investigative report was originally published on Jonathan Larsen’s Substack and is republished with permission. Larsen is an independent journalist and former executive producer at MSNBC.

A high-profile Emirati political commentator and one-time aide to United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed has sparked widespread outrage across social media after launching a scathing, derogatory attack on Pakistan amid growing tensions over a landmark regional security agreement between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey.

Writing on the social platform X on August 15, 2026, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla questioned Pakistan’s role in the new regional security architecture, framing it as one of modern geopolitics’ greatest contradictions. In his viral post, which has amassed more than 1 million views to date, he argued that a nation where a quarter of the population lives in poverty and a third is illiterate, which has battled decades of corrupt military rule, chronic internal unrest, and repeated conflict with its closest neighbors, was acting opportunistically to position itself as a security guarantor for one of the world’s 20 largest economies. Abdulla also pointed to Pakistan’s estimated 170 nuclear warheads, dismissing the arsenal as the country’s only major strategic qualification for its role in the alliance.

His comments were directed at the recently signed Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, a trilateral security pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, as well as a bilateral Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed September 17, 2025, which obligates each nation to respond to any act of aggression against the other. Beyond the immediate controversy over his remarks on Pakistan, Abdulla’s post lays bare growing unease in the UAE over the new security bloc, which many regional analysts view as a direct counter to the growing military cooperation between the UAE and Israel.

The backlash to Abdulla’s comments has been swift, particularly given the close economic and social ties between the UAE and Pakistan: roughly 1.6 million Pakistani expatriates live and work in the Emirates, and their remittances form a critical lifeline for Pakistan’s domestic economy. Critics have pushed back on multiple fronts, arguing that Abdulla’s core premise is deeply flawed. “Comparing poverty and the size of the economy with the political stance is misleading,” one X user wrote in response to the viral post. The user added that Pakistan is a fully sovereign nation with the right to forge its own alliances, and its standing in global affairs is not conditional on its national wealth. “Reducing its qualifications to nuclear weapons ignores its demographic and geopolitical weight and its economy, which has exceeded 400 billion dollars,” the user continued.

Other users have exposed apparent contradictions in Abdulla’s past positions, pointing to older tweets that show he once publicly urged Pakistan to join a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. In a 2015 post about Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, Abdulla wrote that Gulf and Saudi diplomacy should deploy all its leverage to secure Pakistan’s participation in the operation. Critics also highlighted a previous tweet in which Abdulla condemned Gulf voices calling for normalization with Israel, a position that contrasts with the UAE’s official policy as the first Gulf state to formally normalize ties with Israel.

Abdulla had publicly signaled his skepticism of the Mecca pact within days of its signing. On August 7, the day the agreement was finalized, he wrote: “Congratulations on the establishment of this alliance, but strengthening Gulf military and political cooperation and unifying the Gulf house is far more important than investing in regional military and political cooperation that includes countries whose credibility and ability to confront the Iranian-Israeli threat are not taken seriously.” He also questioned the core foundation of the new bloc, asking, “One of the conditions for the success of any alliance is identifying the common enemy. So who is the enemy for the countries of this alliance?”

Abdulaziz al-Tuwaijri, former head of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Isesco), the OIC’s Rabat-based cultural body, was among the most high-profile critics of Abdulla’s latest remarks. Al-Tuwaijri, who previously clashed with Abdulla over the UAE’s ties to Israel, hinting that “anyone who betrays and collaborates with the Zionists will never find security,” responded to the Pakistan tweet by writing, “It seems that the Mecca Agreement syndrome has left you dizzy.”

This public verbal exchange is far more than a social media spat: it lays bare a deepening geopolitical rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, two major Gulf powers that have grown increasingly at odds in recent months. Tensions have already soured over Saudi Arabia’s support for southern Yemeni separatist groups, a position that directly conflicts with Emirati interests. The new Mecca defence pact has amplified these frictions, as it is widely interpreted as a counterweight to the growing military cooperation between the UAE and Israel, a partnership that remains deeply unpopular across most of the Middle East outside of Israeli and pro-U.S. circles.

Theodore Singer, a former U.S. intelligence officer, told Middle East Eye that the two competing blocs offer very different value propositions for their members. “At first glance, the UAE-Israel bloc delivers more tangible gains for both parties, but the Mecca pact may ultimately resonate more broadly and less transactionally,” Singer explained.

The divide between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi has played out in very public view in recent months. In May 2026, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he had made an official visit to the UAE amid the war on Iran, Abu Dhabi swiftly issued a formal denial of the report. In contrast, the signing of the Mecca pact was accompanied by a high-profile public celebration: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan jointly led Friday prayers in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, to mark the occasion.

Some regional analysts argue that the public, formal codification of the Mecca pact gives the alliance unique room to grow in ways that the closed, transactional UAE-Israel bloc cannot match. The rivalry between the UAE and Saudi Arabia has also spilled over into debates over membership expansion for the new pact. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly blocked efforts by Egypt to join the bloc, with Riyadh citing growing concerns that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has aligned too closely with Abu Dhabi.

MEE has previously reported that Egypt has provided substantial military support to the UAE in recent years, deploying air defence systems and fighter jets to the Emirates in response to Iranian attacks, and Sisi has met repeatedly with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed throughout the ongoing regional conflict. No equivalent support has been extended to Saudi Arabia, a fact that has deepened Riyadh’s mistrust of Cairo. Saudi Arabia also views a range of Emirati policies as directly contrary to Egyptian and Saudi strategic interests: these include the UAE’s deepening engagement with Somaliland, its formal strategic partnership with Israel, its public support for Ethiopia in the long-running dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and its backing of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s ongoing civil war.

To date, Cairo has attempted to maintain neutrality between the two competing emerging blocs: one anchored by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and the other by Israel, the UAE, and India. However, Egypt’s existing defence treaty with the UAE and its deployment of fighter jets to Abu Dhabi after Iranian strikes in May have led Saudi Arabia to conclude that Egypt can no longer be counted on as a reliable partner in the region.

On August 12, former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji passed away in Beijing at the age of 97, closing a chapter that transformed modern China and left a lasting blueprint for economic reform across Asia. Widely remembered as one of the most consequential public servants of 20th-century Asia, Zhu led the push to integrate China into the global economy, culminating in the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001 after nearly 15 years of grueling negotiations.

While public tributes have rightfully highlighted the sweeping scale of Zhu’s achievements, his most enduring contribution is far from the large economic figures that dominate retrospective coverage: it is a replicable strategy for domestic reform that any government in the region can adapt. Zhu’s approach, often called “reform by treaty,” centered on making binding international commitments, then leveraging that external momentum to break through domestic political deadlocks that had stalled progressive change.

A trained electrical engineer from Tsinghua University, Zhu governed with the pragmatic, problem-solving rigor of his technical background. Rejecting rigid ideological dogma, he focused on identifying broken systems and building stable, functional institutions in their place. As vice premier starting in 1991, he tamed rampant double-digit inflation by cutting off unsustainable credit to loss-making state-owned enterprises. In 1994, he oversaw a sweeping overhaul of China’s tax system that reestablished stable central government revenue flows. When he assumed the office of premier in 1998, he pushed state-controlled banks, airlines, and energy firms to adopt commercial, market-aligned operating practices without full privatization, and built a private residential housing market from almost nothing.

This pragmatism, rather than blind faith in free markets, guided Zhu’s pursuit of WTO membership. While one Chinese negotiator famously compared the 15-year talks to haggling in a street vegetable market, the core prize of accession was never just access to global export markets — it was domestic reform. By locking China’s opening into binding international law, Zhu gained critical political leverage to overcome resistance from domestic officials who protected entrenched state-owned firms and resisted structural change. For domestic reformers, WTO membership created the external pressure needed to advance long-stalled changes to banking regulation, corporate law, and judicial governance that would have been impossible to push through alone.

What set Zhu apart from many fellow leaders was his willingness to embrace the costs of reform openly, rather than hiding them from the public. His restructuring of bloated state enterprises left an estimated 40 million workers without lifetime state employment, a shift critics labeled “surgery without anesthesia.” He cut import tariffs on automobiles and thousands of other goods from over 100% to a maximum of 25%, drawing fierce accusations from domestic hardliners that he was surrendering China’s economic sovereignty. Upon taking office as premier, he famously declared he would push ahead with reform regardless of whether the path ahead was “a minefield or an abyss” — and he kept that promise.

Crucially, Zhu did not abandon displaced workers amid the restructuring. As lifetime state jobs were eliminated, he rolled out a package of support: existing state apartments were sold to sitting tenants at nominal prices, low-interest mortgages were made widely available, and basic social welfare and unemployment insurance systems were established for the first time. The transition was far from perfect, and Zhu himself would have been the first to acknowledge its flaws, but it gave a generation of workers a tangible stake in private property that they had never held before.

Another rare quality defined Zhu’s leadership: a willingness to take public responsibility for failure. After devastating floods killed more than 4,100 people across China in 1998, he publicly lambasted dikes built with embezzled public funds as no stronger than “bean curd.” Three years later, he appeared on national television to accept personal responsibility for a school explosion that killed 42 people, most of them children. For citizens and market actors alike, this willingness to own mistakes sent a clear message: official data and accountability would not be manipulated. It is a simple act that builds trust in government more effectively than any amount of political messaging.

A honest assessment of Zhu’s legacy must also acknowledge that some challenges emerged after he left office, many of which stem from choices made by his successors. The fiscal system he designed left local governments heavily reliant on land sales for revenue, a dynamic that contributed to the 2021 Chinese property sector crisis. The full financial opening promised at WTO accession was never completed, and the open government procurement market pledged in 2001 remains largely closed to foreign firms. It is important to note, however, that Zhu retired from office in 2003; the binding international agreements he put in place only set the framework, and subsequent leaders made their own choices about how to implement policy within that structure.

For China’s Asian neighbors, Zhu’s WTO gamble delivered uneven outcomes, as he always predicted it would. World Bank economists forecast ahead of accession that the largest gains would go to China itself and the countries that supplied its factories with raw materials, components, and machinery, while nations that competed directly with Chinese manufacturers would face economic pressure. That is exactly what came to pass, and it offers a clear lesson for Asian governments: preparation, not just membership in trade blocs, determines which nations gain from global integration.

Today’s debates around Chinese industrial overcapacity and the country’s near-$1.2 trillion annual trade surplus are valid, but these stem from policy choices made in the decades after Zhu left office, not the landmark bargain he negotiated to join the WTO.

The most fitting tribute to Zhu, the article argues, is not nostalgic remembrance — it is putting his strategy to use. Across Asia today, the region’s next wave of economic progress — from deepening the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to expanding the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), to writing new rules for digital trade, green goods, industrial subsidies, and cross-border data flows — hinges on the same question Zhu answered decades ago: do governments have the courage to sign international agreements precisely to break domestic reform deadlocks? This strategy works for Jakarta, Delhi, Hanoi, and Seoul just as it worked for Beijing.

Zhu’s quieter legacy reinforces this path. As the founding dean of Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management, he trained a generation of Chinese economists and finance officials who have shaped the country’s policy for decades. People and institutions outlast any tariff schedule or trade agreement.

Zhu once joked that an official portrait made him look like a dead man. The man has passed, and the Asian region is dimmer for his loss. But his idea — that bold, honest reform is possible with the courage to leverage external commitment for internal change — is still alive, waiting for the next generation of reformers with even a fraction of his courage to pick it up and carry it forward.

This commentary is by Y. Tony Yang, Endowed Professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.