As the U.S. has become more clear-eyed about seeing Beijing as its primary geopolitical rival, it has at times expressed concern about Sino-Israeli cooperation, a subject Mosaic has covered extensively. The Jewish state has generally acquiesced when its most important ally has asked it to avoid certain dealings with China. But, write Nathan Picarsic and Jonathan Schanzer, America has not always followed its own advice:

Recently, Israel rejected a bid by the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation to build a light rail system. In a bizarre twist, CRRC is now more welcome in the United States thanks to a decision by the Biden administration to remove it from a list of Communist Chinese military companies.

The Israelis announced last month that CRRC lost the tender to build the green and purple lines of Tel Aviv’s light rail system. CRRC may be the largest rolling-stock company in the world, but it is also a Chinese state-owned enterprise. Its extensive ties to the People’s Liberation Army prompted the Trump administration to list it among the Chinese companies into which U.S. investors would be prohibited from investing.

It appears that the White House needs to reexamine its China policies. But not the Israelis. Indeed, one might have expected Israel simply to shrug and accept the CRRC bid. It did not. . . . Israel has admittedly not fully aligned its China policy with the United States. But as the CRRC episode reveals, the U.S. still has a long way to go in aligning with itself.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.