U.S. Pauses Arms Sales to Taiwan as Trump Juggles Iran War and China Thaw

A senior U.S. military official said U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have been “paused,” a move that the Washington Post said is fueling concerns among lawmakers and Taiwanese officials that President Donald Trump’s support for the democratically governed island is wavering as he juggles a Middle East war and a desire for détente with Beijing.

“This paper was written for a May 5 Center on the United States and Europe virtual workshop on “Europe, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean” as part of Brookings’s Reimagining Europe’s security project, along with Nathalie Tocci’s “How can Europe shape the Iran war’s aftermath”

Brookings

The Washington Post framed the pause as part of a broader strain on U.S. support for Taiwan while Trump’s approach is complicated by “Iran war, China thaw” dynamics.

Brookings

In a separate thread on U.S. policy, Brookings said Europe’s refusal to provide more support for the Iran war led U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to announce that Washington would “reexamine the value of NATO.”

Brookings also tied the difficulty of U.S.-European cooperation in the Middle East to U.S. decisions including President Donald Trump’s cutoff of U.S. support to Ukraine and a deliberate U.S. strategy of “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory,” in the words of the 2026 U.S. National Security Strategy.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in an interview broadcast on Fox News, said the United States hopes to persuade China to take a more active role in pressuring Iran to back down from what it is doing in the Gulf.

Rubio made the remarks during an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, as the U.S.- and Israeli-led war on Iran cast its shadow over Trump’s visit to China and as Trump arrived in Beijing to hold talks with Xi Jinping.

Qanah Al-Mamlakah

The Al Jazeera-style framing of the wider regional picture in the sources came through Reuters-cited details that Saudi warplanes bombed targets linked to powerful armed groups allied with Tehran in Iraq during the war with Iran, while Kuwait also carried out strikes on the same country.

The same Reuters-cited account said an Iranian army spokesman described controlling the Strait of Hormuz as a long-term strategic objective and said it could yield revenues equal to as much as twice the country’s oil revenues.

The sources tied the Iran conflict to global energy markets, with the International Energy Agency saying on Wednesday that world oil supplies will fall by about 3.9 million barrels per day in 2026 and fall short of demand due to disruptions caused by the war on Iran.

“ANAYLSIS A 'disoriented' Trump reshuffles the deck in the Middle East The U”

Today

The same account said more than a billion barrels of Middle East supply was already lost, and it described a Chinese-flagged tanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz.

On the diplomacy side, the sources said U.S. and Iranian demands to end the war remained far apart more than a month after the fragile ceasefire went into effect, with Washington urging Tehran to abandon its nuclear program and end the closure of the strait while Iran demanded compensation for war damages, an end to U.S. sanctions, and a halt to fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon.

U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance told White House reporters that “the fundamental question is whether we are making enough progress to reach the red line,” and he added that he must be assured that “we have put in place guarantees to ensure Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.”