标签： Asia

At the 2026 Shangri-La Dialogue hosted in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to dispel growing regional concerns that Washington is turning away from the Asia-Pacific amid its expanding military commitments tied to the conflict in Iran.

Weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump held high-level positive talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Hegseth sought to strike a calibrated balance: acknowledging widespread anxiety over China’s rapid military expansion in the region while stressing that Washington has no interest in provoking unnecessary confrontation.

Responding directly to questions raised by Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, who warned that bad-faith actors could attempt to undermine trust by sowing doubt about U.S. commitment to the region and driving wedges between Washington and its allies, Hegseth pushed back on claims that global obligations pull focus from the Indo-Pacific. “People conflate our global duties with turning our backs on this region, but we are fully capable of advancing multiple priorities at once,” he said. Hegseth emphasized that integrated power projection across the Pacific and close collaboration with regional allies remain core pillars of U.S. national defense strategy, noting that Washington continues its quiet, resolute engagement with partners while working to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

One of the most pressing questions from dialogue participants centered on Washington’s decision to pause a $14 billion arms sales package to Taiwan in order to redirect munitions to the Iran conflict, a move that sparked questions about U.S. ability to meet its security commitments to regional partners. Hegseth sought to decouple the two issues, reassuring attendees that the U.S. maintains a robust overall munitions stockpile and has sufficient industrial capacity to ramp up production if additional supplies are required.

In his keynote address ahead of Hegseth’s remarks, Vietnamese President To Lam called for expanded diplomatic dialogue to de-escalate simmering regional tensions. Striking a more hardline tone on security policy, Hegseth pushed back against traditional diplomatic framing, arguing that the region needs more tangible military capability rather than empty diplomatic rhetoric. “Rules are meaningless if you cannot back them up with hard power,” he said. “We do not need more conference dialogues – we need more combat power, more ships, more submarines.” Hegseth also positioned this approach as a departure from what he described as hollow “globalist rhetoric” around the rules-based international order.

Consistent with his messaging from the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue, Hegseth pressed regional allies to increase their defense spending, setting a formal target of 3.5% of gross domestic product for all regional partners. He openly praised partners that have boosted military outlays and deepened security cooperation with Washington in recent months, specifically naming Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines. In contrast, he called out countries he labeled defense “freeloaders,” singling out New Zealand in his comments, and added that NATO and European allies face critical upcoming decisions on their own defense commitments.

Notably, Hegseth adopted a far softer tone on cross-strait and China policy this year compared to his 2025 address, where he accused Beijing of posing an imminent threat to Taiwan. He only referenced the suspended Taiwan arms package in response to a direct question, weeks after President Xi warned Trump during their Beijing summit that Taiwan remains the most sensitive core issue in bilateral relations.

“While there is rightful concern over China’s unprecedented military buildup, we recognize that our regional allies do not seek constant escalation,” Hegseth said. The U.S. goal, he added, is to maintain a balanced regional power structure where no nation – including China – can impose hegemony over others, working toward “a genuinely stable equilibrium that preserves the conditions for long-standing peace and prosperity across the region. We approach this challenge with measured, deliberate strength, not unnecessary confrontation.”

The Shangri-La Dialogue, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, is one of the most high-profile annual defense forums in the Indo-Pacific, long serving as a key platform for regional states to hold direct security talks with the United States and China. This year marks the second consecutive year that China has declined to send its sitting defense minister, instead delegating a lower-ranking delegation. Analysts and attendees remain divided on the move: some interpret the decision as a deliberate snub to the forum, while others frame it as a choice to avoid direct public confrontation with the U.S. amid ongoing great power competition for influence across the region.

For nearly 80 years following Pakistan’s 1947 founding, a defining line has been printed on every Pakistani passport: “Valid for all countries of the world except Israel.” This is far more than a bureaucratic footnote; it is the physical embodiment of one of Pakistan’s most enduring and consensus-driven foreign policy pillars: the total non-recognition of the Israeli state.

Rooted in widespread religious solidarity with Palestinians, reinforced by a politically active media landscape, and preserved by successive governments that have refused to challenge popular opinion, this position has held unshaken through decades of regional and global upheaval. Pakistan’s policy has consistently tied any potential recognition of Israel to the creation of an independent Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its sovereign capital – a red line that has remained consistent regardless of which party or military leadership holds power in Islamabad.

Now, that decades-long national consensus is facing an unprecedented test of external pressure, sparked by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping new proposal that ties a potential post-war peace deal with Iran to a mandatory, broad expansion of the Abraham Accords.

First negotiated during Trump’s first term in 2020, the Abraham Accords are a set of bilateral normalization agreements between Israel and multiple Muslim-majority nations, starting with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with Morocco and Sudan joining the framework shortly after. In a recent Truth Social post, released following closed-door talks with Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump called for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other regional states to join the accords simultaneously to cement a historic regional settlement. “It should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and everybody else should follow suit,” Trump wrote.

Islamabad rejected the demand within days. Speaking to a local Pakistani television channel on May 26, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif made clear that Pakistan would never join any agreement that contradicted its core ideological commitments. “Right now, no initiative in this regard has been taken by us, nor has anyone asked us,” Asif added, echoing earlier official statements that reaffirmed Pakistan’s longstanding stance. Just months prior, in January 2024, Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi reiterated that Pakistan would not join the Abraham Accords, framing the issue solely through the lens of Palestinian statehood: “We have no issue with which countries choose to join or not join the accords. We view the matter through the prism of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.”

The public demand has reignited a long-simmering periodic debate in Pakistan that has rarely gained mainstream political traction: could Islamabad ever reverse its position on recognizing Israel, and what conditions would force such a shift?

Analysts broadly agree that Pakistan’s stance is shaped not only by diplomatic principle, but by overwhelming domestic political realities that make normalization extremely high-risk for any sitting government. Unlike the Gulf monarchies that joined the initial Abraham Accords, Pakistan operates a competitive political system where public opinion, Islamist opposition parties, armed factions, parliament, civil society, and a fiercely independent media all exert heavy influence over foreign policy outcomes, explained Muhammad Israr Madani, head of the Islamabad-based International Research Council for Religious Affairs. A senior anonymous Pakistani foreign ministry official echoed this assessment, noting that “the political costs of normalisation are ‘significantly higher in Pakistan than in most Arab states. Any government perceived as abandoning the Palestinian cause would face immediate resistance from religious parties and significant sections of the public.’”

The issue is further complicated by Pakistan’s decades-long stance on the Kashmir dispute, where Pakistani policymakers have long drawn parallels between the Kashmiri and Palestinian struggles, framing both as fights for self-determination enshrined in international law. Many analysts warn that recognizing Israel without a final Palestinian settlement would open Islamabad to accusations of diplomatic hypocrisy and undermine a core pillar of its regional foreign policy narrative.

Trump’s latest proposal goes further than prior U.S. efforts by tying any future progress on Iran diplomacy to expanded normalization, a demand that has been met with deep skepticism across much of the Muslim world, amplified by widespread public anger over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The Abraham Accords have remained a central pillar of Trump’s Middle East policy vision, and his closest congressional ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, has publicly backed the push, warning that refusal to join the framework would bring “severe repercussions” for bilateral relationships with the U.S. and would go down as a “major miscalculation” in history.

The debate comes at a particularly sensitive juncture for U.S.-Pakistan relations, as Islamabad has sought to position itself as a neutral diplomatic bridge between Washington and Tehran, while maintaining close strategic ties to both Saudi Arabia and China. Graham and other U.S. lawmakers have openly questioned whether Pakistan can credibly serve as a neutral mediator while maintaining its hardline opposition to Israeli recognition.

For Pakistani policymakers, however, joining the accords would carry severe strategic and domestic risks: recognition could destabilize Pakistan’s longstanding close ties to Iran, spark mass domestic unrest, and unravel the carefully balanced regional neutrality Islamabad has cultivated for decades. “The Abraham Accords cannot be sustained through coercion or transactional pressure,” explained Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Iran and the UAE. Durrani argued that lasting regional peace requires “credible diplomacy, mutual security guarantees, de-escalation with Iran, and meaningful progress on Palestine” rather than external pressure tactics that shift responsibility onto regional governments.

Veteran Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir echoed this take, suggesting on social media platform X that Trump’s recent remarks stem from frustration over Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s prior refusal to join the accords. Even so, many analysts caution against assuming that U.S. pressure will force a policy shift, noting that Pakistan has a long history of maintaining independent stances on core strategic issues – from its relationship with China to its approach to the Afghanistan war – even when facing intense pressure from Washington. A senior Islamabad-based security official noted that Trump himself acknowledged that some countries could ultimately opt out of the expanded framework, and Pakistan is widely seen as the most likely holdout.

While Pakistan insists all its foreign policy decisions are rooted in national sovereignty, most analysts agree that any future shift on the Israel issue will be heavily determined by Saudi Arabia’s position. As the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites and one of Pakistan’s closest and most consequential strategic partners, Riyadh’s policy choices carry enormous political and religious weight in Islamabad. The bilateral relationship extends far beyond diplomacy: Saudi Arabia has long provided Pakistan with critical financial support, large-scale foreign investment, employment for millions of Pakistani migrant workers, and deep defense cooperation. The two countries further cemented this partnership with a mutual security pact signed in September 2023, which stipulates that an attack on one will be considered an attack on the other – a commitment that underscores the depth of their strategic alignment.

Against this backdrop, most observers believe Riyadh’s approach to Israel will shape any future debate over normalization in Pakistan. Michael Kugelman, senior fellow for South Asia at The Atlantic Council, recently noted that if Saudi Arabia were to join the Abraham Accords, Pakistan would face significant pressure to revisit its stance. “But given where public sentiment stands, a Pakistani government that joins them would risk committing political suicide,” Kugelman warned in a post on X. Even so, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stated that any normalization with Israel must be tied to a clear pathway to a two-state solution, a position that aligns almost perfectly with Pakistan’s existing stance.

If normalization was already politically out of reach for most Muslim-majority states before October 2023, the outbreak of the Gaza war has made the prospect even more remote. Prior to the Hamas attack on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent military response, the U.S. was actively courting Saudi Arabia to join the accords, with many analysts predicting a breakthrough was increasingly likely. A Saudi decision to normalize would have placed enormous pressure on Pakistan to revise its own position, given Riyadh’s influence across the Muslim world. But that prospect was derailed entirely by the war, which froze Saudi-Israeli normalization talks indefinitely.

As civilian casualties have mounted and footage of widespread destruction in Gaza has dominated media coverage across the Muslim world, public support for any engagement with Israel has plummeted. In Pakistan, the war has further hardened already firm public attitudes: a 2023 Gallup Pakistan survey found that 91 percent of Pakistanis sympathize with Palestinians in Gaza, while just 2 percent express sympathy for Israel. Religious groups, all mainstream political parties, and civil society organizations have framed the Gaza war as proof that normalization without a viable independent Palestinian state is both morally indefensible and politically unsustainable.

For the foreseeable future, Pakistan shows no sign of shifting its 77-year-old stance. While shifting regional dynamics and periodic external pressure have sparked repeated speculation about an impending policy change, Pakistan’s longstanding red line on Israeli recognition remains firmly in place.

A recent Financial Times investigation published Thursday has uncovered fresh financial evidence linking Iran International, the London-based Persian-language opposition news outlet, to Saudi Arabian state-backed media interests, challenging years of public denials from the outlet of any official foreign government ties. The revelations emerge against the already volatile backdrop of the February 2025 U.S. military attack on Iran, bringing new scrutiny to the network’s financial backing and editorial role in regional tensions.

The findings center on a $870 million debt-for-equity restructuring transaction completed by Volant Media UK, Iran International’s parent company, in December 2024, a move designed to stabilize the outlet’s finances after years of heavy operating losses. Internal corporate documents reviewed by the FT show that Volant Media has racked up more than $550 million in cumulative losses over the past five years, with outstanding debts totaling roughly $645 million to connected entities as of the end of the 2024 financial year.

Founded in 2017 by individuals billed as British-Saudi private investors, Iran International has grown into a large-scale operation with 700 employees, broadcasting into Iran via satellite, radio, and multiple social media platforms. The outlet describes itself as the most popular Persian-language news channel based outside of Iran, but it has long faced accusations from critics that it covertly promotes foreign-backed regime change in Iran and advocates for the return of the Iranian monarchy under Reza Pahlavi, the former shah’s son. For years, the outlet has repeatedly denied any formal or informal ties to either the Saudi or Israeli governments.

The December 2024 debt restructuring included a major corporate shakeup: Volant Media issued 648 million new shares valued at $870 million to settle outstanding debts, and all 50,000 original founding shares held by Adel Abdulkarim Alabdulkarim — a British-Saudi film executive who serves as Volant’s director and company secretary — were transferred to Info-Cast Cayman Limited, an offshore holding company registered in the Cayman Islands. The FT confirms Alabdulkarim retains significant control over Volant, with the power to appoint or remove a majority of the outlet’s board of directors, though Info-Cast Cayman is formally listed as Volant’s immediate parent company as of the end of 2024.

Corporate records from the Cayman Islands show Saleh Hussain Aldowais is the sole director of Info-Cast Cayman. A public figure matching that name holds the position of chief operations officer at Saudi Research and Media Group (SRMG), a major state-backed Saudi media corporation publicly traded on the Riyadh stock exchange. SRMG operates more than 30 global media outlets, including prominent publications such as Asharq Al-Awsat, Arab News, and Asharq News, the latter of which maintains a content partnership with Bloomberg News.

In a statement to the FT, an Iran International spokesperson pushed back on the implications of the corporate restructuring, saying the debt-for-equity swap did not involve any new capital injection into the outlet. The spokesperson repeated the outlet’s longstanding claim that “it has never received funding from any government or state entity – including Saudi Arabia or Israel – whether directly or indirectly.” The spokesperson added that any external professional roles held by individuals connected to the outlet are held in a personal capacity, are entirely separate from Iran International’s operations, and do not impact the network’s editorial, operational, or financial independence.

The FT’s revelations come amid heightened scrutiny of Iran International’s reporting in the lead-up to the U.S. war on Iran, which began on February 28, 2025. The outlet provided extensive coverage of nationwide anti-government protests that erupted in Iran earlier that year, triggered by a severe cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by long-standing U.S. economic sanctions. In January 2025, Iran International published a claim that more than 36,500 people had been killed in the Iranian government’s crackdown on the demonstrations — a death toll far higher than independent estimates published by Western governments and international human rights organizations. Days before launching military action against Iran, then-U.S. President Donald Trump publicly cited a casualty number nearly identical to that published by Iran International, though he never disclosed the source of his figure. A separate April 2025 New York Times report later confirmed that Israeli officials had lobbied the Trump administration to intervene militarily in Iran, pointing to the ongoing protests as justification. Israeli officials told U.S. leaders that the country’s intelligence service, Mossad, could help foment additional unrest to bring about the collapse of the Islamic Republic government.

For over half a century, Washington’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s military dominance over all regional rivals has anchored the decades-long alliance between the United States and Israel, shaping power dynamics across the entire Middle East. This core policy, formally known as Qualitative Military Edge (QME), has guided billions of dollars in U.S. military support, restricted arms sales to other regional states, and become a flashpoint for growing political controversy amid Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.

The QME framework emerged in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, taking root during the Cold War when the U.S. and Soviet Union backed opposing blocs in the region. The first landmark step toward formalizing this commitment came in 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson approved the sale of 50 advanced F-4 Phantom fighter jets to Israel — a departure from earlier U.S. arms export restrictions to the country. When the 1973 Arab-Israeli War broke out, with Moscow pouring arms into Arab coalition forces, Washington responded with sweeping logistical and military backing for Israel. By 1977, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a key architect of Cold War U.S. foreign policy, framed Israeli security as a core moral priority for all democratic nations, cementing the policy’s ideological standing.

The 1980s marked the first explicit official use of the term “qualitative military edge”. In 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig confirmed before Congress that preserving Israel’s military superiority had been a central pillar of U.S. policy since the 1973 war. The policy’s influence extended to all U.S. arms deals in the region: when Washington sold F-15S Strike Eagle warplanes to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, the jets were fitted with downgraded radar technology, and Riyadh was barred from stationing the aircraft at its Tabuk airbase near the Israeli border to avoid threatening Israel’s advantage.

QME was formally codified into U.S. federal law in October 2008 under the George W. Bush administration via the Naval Vessel Transfer Act. The legislation legally bound the U.S. government to ensure that any arms exports to other Middle Eastern states do not undermine Israel’s military superiority, formally defining QME as Israel’s ability to defeat any credible conventional military threat — from individual states, coalitions, or non-state actors — with minimal casualties, through superior technology, weaponry, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. The law also mandated a quadrennial assessment of Israel’s military edge relative to regional neighbors, a requirement updated in 2013 by the Israel QME Enhancement Act, signed by President Barack Obama, to require assessments every two years.

Since the end of World War II, cumulative U.S. military aid to Israel has surpassed $240 billion when adjusted for inflation, making Israel the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign military assistance in modern history. The current framework for this support is a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the Obama administration, which allocates a minimum of $3.8 billion in annual military aid to Israel through 2029 — the largest single military aid pledge in U.S. history. The agreement requires Israel to spend the vast majority of these funds on U.S.-manufactured military equipment, ensuring the investment cycles back to the American defense industry. At the time of the signing, Obama emphasized that “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable”, noting that access to cutting-edge U.S. weapons technology would guarantee Israel’s ability to defend itself against all threats.

In the years following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza that human rights groups have labeled genocide, additional U.S. military support to Israel has surged to record levels. Congressional data shows that annual U.S. military contributions to Israel hit a new high of more than $12.5 billion in 2024.

At the center of current U.S. arms exports to Israel is the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter, manufactured by American defense giant Lockheed Martin with components supplied by eight partner nations including the United Kingdom and Germany. As the world’s most technologically advanced stealth jet, prized for its long range, 360-degree integrated sensors and radar evasion, the F-35 is also the most expensive weapons program in history, with total program costs exceeding $2 trillion and a per-unit price of $82.5 million for the standard F-35A variant. As the program’s controlling owner, the U.S. only approves F-35 sales to NATO members or U.S.-designated Major Non-Nato Allies, with just 20 countries currently operating the jet. The U.S. itself operates 1,763 F-35s, more than all other operator nations combined.

Israel became the first foreign country to purchase the F-35 in 2010, receiving its first deliveries in 2016, and remains the only country in the Middle East and North Africa region to operate the jet. Israel’s custom variant, designated the F-35I Adir (Hebrew for “The Mighty One”), is modified to integrate Israeli-developed electronics and software. In 2018, Israel became the first country to use the F-35 in combat, launching an airstrike in Lebanon. Israeli F-35s have since been used in operations across the region against targets in Iran, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, and Gaza, where the Israeli campaign has killed nearly 73,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. During the 2025 Israel-Iran war, Middle East Eye reporting confirmed that the U.S. approved Israeli modifications to its F-35 fleet to add external fuel tanks, allowing non-stop round-trip flights from Israel to Iran without refueling at U.S. bases in the Gulf or Caucasus, where host governments declined permission for Israeli refueling stops. Beyond the F-35, Israel also operates large fleets of U.S.-made F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, and the U.S. has invested billions of dollars into co-developing Israel’s world-renowned layered air defense systems, including Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling, produced in partnership with U.S. defense firm Raytheon.

Washington has also long maintained a deliberate policy of ambiguity toward Israel’s status as the Middle East’s only undeclared nuclear power, which developed outside public U.S. oversight and was first publicly exposed by Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu in 1986.

In recent years, the massive scale of U.S. military support for Israel has sparked growing political backlash in the U.S., amplified by widespread international condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The only Palestinian-American member of Congress, Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, argued in September 2025 that the U.S.-backed, U.S.-funded military operation in Gaza is growing more horrific by the day without congressional action to cut off aid. Criticism has also emerged from across the political aisle: in July 2025, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced an amendment to cut $500 million in funding for Iron Dome, which gained support from Tlaib and progressive Democrat Ilhan Omar but failed by a lopsided 422-6 vote. High-profile conservative commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has also called for a full end to U.S. aid, telling Israel’s Channel 13 in May 2025 that “I don’t think the United States owes Israel anything. I don’t think the U.S. should give Israel anything. I think we should stop all aid to Israel tomorrow.” The White House dismissed Carlson’s comments as the work of a “low-IQ person who spreads fake news for cheap publicity.”

The future of the QME policy was thrown into question in November 2025, when President Donald Trump announced during a White House visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the U.S. would proceed with a plan to sell F-35 stealth fighters to Saudi Arabia, as part of a broader package of bilateral trade and defense deals worth billions of dollars. Trump acknowledged Israeli concerns that selling top-tier F-35s to Riyadh would undermine its military edge, saying “I know they [Israel] would like you to get planes of reduced calibre. I don’t think that makes you too happy… I think they [Saudi Arabia and Israel] are both at a level where they should get top of the line.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back quickly, saying that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to preserving Israel’s QME in all regional arms sales. The proposed sale has not yet received congressional ratification, and its path forward remains uncertain.

Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Middle East Eye that the sale’s outcome will depend heavily on whether the Trump administration has enough political capital to advance the deal amid heightened congressional scrutiny, particularly if 2026 midterm elections shift control of one or both congressional chambers to the Democratic Party. This is not the first time a proposed F-35 sale to a Gulf state has run into obstacles: in 2020, during Trump’s first term, the administration announced plans to sell up to 50 F-35A jets to the United Arab Emirates following the Abraham Accords normalization agreement between Israel and the UAE, but President Joe Biden paused the deal after taking office in 2021 over concerns about UAE’s economic and security ties with China. When Washington imposed strict access restrictions on the jets, the UAE pulled out of the deal at the end of 2021 and ruled out reopening talks in 2024. Turkey similarly lost access to the F-35 program in 2019 after purchasing Russian-made S-400 air defense systems, which U.S. officials said posed unacceptable intelligence risks. A NATO member and original F-35 production partner, Turkey has paid roughly $1.4 billion for the jets it ordered, six of which remain undelivered; President Recep Tayyip Erdogan requested that Trump revisit the ban during a March 2025 diplomatic request.

Despite the proposed Saudi sale, Israel continues to expand its own fleet of advanced U.S. fighter jets. In May 2026, Israel announced plans to purchase 25 additional F-35s alongside a squadron of new F-15IA advanced fighter jets. Combined with a 2023 order for 25 more F-35s, the purchases will bring Israel’s F-35 fleet to roughly 100 jets, giving it one of the largest F-35 squadrons outside the United States. Ulrichsen noted that even with new arms sales to Gulf partners, longstanding U.S. commitment to QME is unlikely to shift. “The US is likely to maintain its commitment to preserving Israel’s QME even as it deepens defence and security ties with the Gulf States,” he said.

A grassroots petition demanding scrutiny of Israeli-linked and pro-Israel lobbying activity in British politics has crossed the 100,000-signature threshold required for a mandatory parliamentary debate, forcing what advocates call a long-overdue conversation about foreign influence and democratic integrity in the UK. Scheduled for discussion on June 22, the petition has collected more than 116,000 signatures from UK citizens concerned that unregulated lobbying is skewing government policy, party priorities and public discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The petition’s text frames the debate as an urgent necessity, pointing to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, continued Israeli expansion and repression in the West Bank, and the UK government’s aligned response to these events as evidence of the need to map the full scope of pro-Israel influence across British political institutions. Under UK parliamentary rules, any public petition hosted on the official government website that garners 10,000 signatures requires a formal written response from the government, while any crossing 100,000 signatures must be scheduled for a full debate in the House of Commons.

In its initial response to the petition, the UK government has already rejected calls for a dedicated investigation into pro-Israel lobbying, claiming existing regulatory frameworks already address foreign political interference. Critics push back against this claim, noting that the government’s flagship review into foreign financial interference—led by former senior diplomat Matthew Rycroft—explicitly focuses on Russian, Chinese and Iranian interference and does not mention Israeli influence at all.

Andy Kalil, the creator of the petition, dismissed the government’s position as empty deflection, arguing that clear conflicts of interest between pro-Israel lobbying donations and UK policy on Gaza, the West Bank, Iran and southern Lebanon amount to a major political scandal on par with some of the most high-profile controversies in recent British political history.

Documentation of unreported and disclosed pro-Israel donations underpins these concerns, particularly within the current ruling Labour Party. Data shows that more than half of Keir Starmer’s cabinet have received donations from pro-Israel lobbying groups. One of the most prominent of these donors, Trevor Chinn, contributed £175,000 between 2017 and 2020 to Labour Together, the influential think tank that spearheaded Starmer’s successful campaign to oust Jeremy Corbyn, a longtime critic of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, as Labour leader. Chinn’s donations granted him repeated private access to senior Labour figures, including current Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

That £700,000 in donations to Labour Together during Starmer’s leadership campaign went undeclared to the UK’s Electoral Commission, resulting in a £14,000 fine for the group. After the undeclared funding was exposed in journalist Paul Holden’s book *The Fraud*, reports emerged that Labour Together hired a public relations firm to investigate journalists who leaked the information, then attempted to destroy evidence of a coordinated smear campaign against the reporters.

The pro-Israel funding that flowed through Labour Together was a core component of a successful effort to unseat Corbyn and shift the Labour Party sharply to the right on Middle East policy. Since taking office, Starmer has stated publicly that Israel has a right to cut power and water access to Gaza, a position aligned with pro-Israel lobbying priorities. The think tank has also been linked to a series of coordinated “astroturf” campaigns fronted by groups like the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and Stop Funding Fake News—co-founded by senior Labour politicians Steve Reed and Imran Ahmed—designed to attack independent pro-Palestine media and push left-wing, pro-Corbyn figures out of the party.

Since Starmer took control of the party, one-third of newly elected Labour MPs have professional backgrounds in lobbying, and one-quarter have received direct funding from pro-Israel groups. Even ahead of the 2024 general election, Luke Akehurst, a former director of the pro-Israel advocacy group We Believe in Israel, was selected to run for a safe Labour seat in Durham, reflecting the movement’s deep penetration into party ranks.

Pro-Israel lobbying is not limited to the Labour Party, either. Roughly 80% of Conservative Members of Parliament are members of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), an organization that has provided more than £330,000 to fund 118 MPs’ trips to Israel across 160 separate visits.

Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law at London’s Queen Mary University, argues that the double standard in how foreign influence is scrutinized in the UK reveals clear political alignment. While Russian, Chinese and Iranian interference are repeatedly framed as threats to British national interests and subject to intense regulatory and media scrutiny, Gordon says those countries exert far less actual influence on UK policy than the pro-Israel lobby, whose impact is consistently downplayed. Gordon explains that this double standard exists because the pro-Israel lobby is broadly aligned with long-standing British geopolitical interests, allowing the government to hide its own policy preferences behind the narrative of external lobbying influence.

Jeremy Corbyn, who faced years of pressure from pro-Israel groups during his time as Labour leader, confirmed that this pressure is both political and commercial. He recalled being asked during a private Parliamentary Labour Party meeting whether he would offer unconditional support for Israeli military action, and said he faced constant, enormous pressure across all areas of his leadership due to his dissenting views on Middle East policy.

Commercial lobbying is also a major factor: Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private weapons manufacturer, held multiple meetings with UK Home Office officials and lobbied the government during its crackdown on Palestine Action, a direct action group that stages protests against the company’s UK facilities. The government ultimately proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization—a decision that was later ruled unlawful by the UK High Court, though the government has continued to appeal the ruling.

Critics of the pro-Israel lobby also highlight its coordinated strategy of framing criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitism to silence dissent. Leah Levene and Jonathan Rosenhead of Jewish Voice for Liberation, a group representing anti-Zionist Jews in the UK, point to organizations like UK Lawyers for Israel, which has been accused of waging legal intimidation campaigns against activists who oppose Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and Campaign Against Antisemitism, whose legal actions against pro-Palestine public figures were labeled “abusive” by a UK judge.

Levene and Rosenhead note that mainstream pro-Israel Jewish organizations like the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Office of the Chief Rabbi have successfully positioned themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of all Jewish people in the UK, erasing dissent from anti-Zionist Jews and flattening diverse community perspectives into a single pro-Israel consensus. When any public figure voices criticism of Israeli policy, these organizations come down heavily to silence that dissent, which in turn undermines open democratic debate by cutting off space for alternative viewpoints.

Hil Aked, author of *Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity*, contextualizes the deep roots of pro-Israel lobbying in British political history, noting that the development of the Zionist movement has long been intertwined with the history of the British Empire. Aked explains that pro-Israel organizers have consistently framed their goals as aligned with British national interests to win support from successive UK governments. A key example, Aked argues, is the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for the creation of the state of Israel and was drafted by the same generation of British politicians who passed the 1905 Aliens Act, the UK’s first modern anti-immigration law that blocked Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe from entering the UK. This historical context, Aked says, makes clear that Zionism and antisemitism are not incompatible, and that pro-Israel lobbying in the UK is not a foreign import—it has been actively fostered by successive British governments for more than a century.

For campaigners like Andrew Feinstein, co-founder of the anti-corruption non-profit Shadow World Investigations, open debate about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby is a core requirement for protecting British democracy. “Unless we are prepared to have a transparent, open and frank conversation not only about the Israel lobby, but about the influence of all money in politics, we will continue to have nothing better than the best democracy money can buy,” Feinstein said.

In a landmark federal court hearing held in downtown Los Angeles Friday, a one-time leader of a majority-Asian Southern California city entered a guilty plea to a federal charge of operating as an unregistered illegal agent for the Chinese government.

Eileen Wang, 56, who stepped down from her position as mayor of Arcadia — a suburban community of roughly 53,000 located 21 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles — earlier this April, formally admitted to carrying out requests for Chinese officials without meeting U.S. legal requirements to disclose her foreign work to American authorities. She was initially indicted on the single charge back in April 2023.

Wang first won a seat on Arcadia’s five-member city council in the November 2022 general election, a body that selects its mayor on a rotating annual basis. Federal prosecutors document that her unlawful activities took place between late 2020 and 2022, a timeline that both city officials and Wang’s legal team confirm ended before she assumed public office.

During the plea hearing, U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu walked Wang through standard procedural checks to confirm she fully understood her constitutional rights and the penalties attached to her guilty plea. Though a Mandarin interpreter was on hand for the proceeding, Wang declined the service, confirming she could follow the hearing without assistance. She was granted continued release on a $25,000 bond ahead of her scheduled October 6 sentencing, where she faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and three years of supervised release following incarceration.

Court documents attached to her plea agreement detail that Wang collaborated with her then-fiancé Yaoning “Mike” Sun to advance Chinese government propaganda through a digital platform called U.S. News Center. Sun, who also served as treasurer for Wang’s 2022 city council campaign, pleaded guilty to the identical charge last October and is currently serving a four-year federal prison sentence. Wang’s legal team has stated her romantic relationship with Sun ended in spring 2024, and in a statement following her resignation, the attorneys noted Wang “trusted and loved the wrong person, who ultimately led her astray.”

One key documented incident from June 2021 lays out the core of Wang’s cooperation: after a Chinese government official sent Wang a link to an op-ed written by China’s Los Angeles consul general and published in the *Los Angeles Times*, Wang shared the link to her collaborative website within minutes. The op-ed rejected international reporting of systematic human rights abuses including persecution, forced labor and mass incarceration against Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, falsely claiming “There has never been genocide in Xinjiang or forced labor in the region’s cotton fields or any other sector.” The United States and dozens of other nations have formally recognized Beijing’s systemic repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang as genocide and crimes against humanity.

Local reactions to Wang’s plea have reignited long-simmering tensions in Arcadia, a city with a large concentration of Chinese American residents. Many local residents and former elected officials have argued Wang should have been removed from office immediately after she first became linked to the FBI investigation into Sun’s activities.

Current acting mayor Paul Cheng has pushed back on that criticism, noting the city charter only grants the city council authority to remove a sitting member after they have been convicted of a felony crime — a milestone Wang had not reached prior to her guilty plea. “We are not law enforcement investigators, and politicizing an active federal case would only undermine the ongoing investigation,” Cheng explained of the council’s previous inaction.