As Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Chinese President Xi Jinping huddle in Beijing, two senators, one Democratic and one Republican, raised concerns about the deepening ties between the Islamic Republic and China, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Sit-down: Xi pledged yesterday that “China will unswervingly develop friendly cooperation with Iran no matter how international and regional situations change,” while Raisi said he’s seeking to expand economic and trade relations with China, which have faltered in recent years.

Red flag: “It’s a matter of great concern,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) told JI yesterday. “We see these authoritarian powers finding more and more common ground. I think it’s something that we should all be deeply concerned about.” Hagerty cautioned that China may be “looking at ways to prop up the Iranian regime by financing them through oil purchases,” and said that deepening Chinese economic ties with Iran could make Beijing an accessory to Iran’s assistance to Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine.

In agreement: “I’ve been very alarmed by the deepening relationship between Iran and China,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who was a prominent supporter of negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program, told JI. “We’re keeping more than an eye on it,” Van Hollen continued. “This started some time ago with their strategic cooperation agreement… I think this is one more reason why we need to make sure we strengthen our hand vis-a-vis China when it comes to global issues.”

Read the full story here.

Bonus: China will “constructively participate” in efforts to revive Iran’s nuclear deal,” Xi said during Raisi’s visit, Semafor reports, noting that relations between the two countries had grown tense after Xi visited Saudi Arabia, angering Tehran. 

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, announced her presidential campaign on Tuesday with robust connections to many prominent Jewish and pro-Israel leaders and activists, whose potential support could lend a crucial boost as she steps up to run against former President Donald Trump in a Republican field that is likely to grow in the coming months. Haley, who is expected to formally launch her campaign in Charleston on Wednesday, has frequently addressed AIPAC conferences and Republican Jewish Coalition events, where she has burnished her reputation as a darling of the pro-Israel establishment. Past contributors to her political nonprofit, Stand for America, Inc., include such big-name Jewish benefactors as Dr. Miriam Adelson, Bernie Marcus, Daniel Loeb, Ronald Lauder and Samuel Zell, among others, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. 

Restrained response: But with a year to go until primary season commences, it remains to be seen if Jewish Republicans will soon begin coalescing around Haley’s fledgling campaign or if they are instead taking a wait-and-see approach to the election, as several other GOP heavyweights mull bids of their own. Interviews with a handful of conservative Jewish leaders on Tuesday suggest that Haley’s campaign, which had been widely expected, is naturally generating excitement among pro-Israel activists, even as some of her traditional backers seem relatively cautious, for now, about publicly committing to one particular candidate.

In praise of courage: “I am extremely proud of Nikki Haley for being the first to stand up and announce running against former President Trump,” Fred Zeidman, a Houston-based GOP donor and pro-Israel advocate, told JI. “It appears that with all the folks talking about it there’s been a great reluctance to stand up and face him, and the fact she’s done it shows great courage and leadership.” Last September, Zeidman, who previously donated at least $10,000 to Stand for America, moderated an RJC event in Houston with Haley and Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas. Still, he declined to say for the record if he would support Haley’s campaign at this early stage, notwithstanding his clear reservations over the former president, whom he characterized as “arguably ruthless” toward “anybody who has run” against him in prior elections.

Wait and see: “Nikki has obviously had a very good relationship with the Jewish community and with folks who care about Israel,” Nachama Soloveichik, the communications director for Haley’s campaign, said in an interview with JI on Tuesday. “I’m confident that we’ll see a lot of folks coming out to support her. But how that shakes out, we’re going to have to see.” Loeb, Lauder and Zell all declined to comment through press representatives on Tuesday, while other former contributors to Haley did not respond to email inquiries from JI.

Laser focus: Trump’s status within Republican Jewish circles, meanwhile, has diminished somewhat amid the fallout from his controversial dinner with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, who made a series of antisemitic statements in recent months, and far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes at his Palm Beach residence in November. Soloveichik, however, indicated that Haley would not be directly addressing those tensions as she embarks on her first presidential campaign. “We’re not focused on anyone else,” she told JI. “Nikki’s focused on running against Joe Biden and putting out her vision. Whatever Trump does, Trump does. I don’t have anything to add on that.” Haley made no mention of Trump, who announced his third consecutive bid for the presidency three months ago, in her campaign launch video, though some comments were easily construed as aimed at the former president. 

Read the full story here.

Bonus: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board weighs in on Haley’s run, writing that while the charisma she brings to the race is clear, the rationale for her candidacy is not. “She hasn’t staked out any clear domestic policy directions, and she doesn’t have an obvious core of support. Her ‘new generation’ line suggests Ms. Haley, age 51, will make her relative youth and vitality a contrast with Messrs. Biden and Trump. Good idea, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another likely candidate, is 44. Other likely candidates are similarly youthful.”

Israel will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding this spring, marking the date in 1948 that David Ben-Gurion announced the creation of the State of Israel in the waning hours of the British Mandate. The following year and a half would see thousands killed as the nascent Jewish state fought for its existence. But while the war for independence officially began in May 1948, the die had been cast a decade earlier. That’s the argument that journalist and analyst Oren Kessler makes in his new book, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict, which chronicles the three-year period in which, Kessler told Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss, “the ‘48 war was won by the Zionists and lost by the Arabs of Palestine.”

On choosing the 1936-1939 time period: “I had been looking for a topic to write a book about, and I decided what the world needs is another book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!” Kessler, whose book comes out today, quipped. “But fairly quickly, I realized that this is a very saturated field, and it seemed as if every aspect of this land and this conflict had been written about from 15 different angles, until I lit upon this particular topic and time period and chapter in the history of this land and this conflict, which struck me as extremely formative and important and seriously under-explored and under-investigated. It seemed to me, and it’s still my belief, that there is a major gap in the literature and one that can shed a lot of light into our current situation, and one that’s filled with a lot of really fascinating, compelling characters on all three sides: Jewish, Arab and British, some of whom are very well known to us, [such as] Winston Churchill, David Ben-Gurion, the grand mufti [of Jerusalem], [and] others who are not so well-known, but I think ought to be. And that’s the gap that I sought to fill.”

Secret documents: “Some of the most key documents on this period were only declassified a few years ago.” Kessler said. “So there was a wide archival record since the ‘70s, but some of the most sensitive, important documentation was classified much longer. For example, the secret testimonies from the Peel Commission of 1937. This was a royal commission sent by the British to respond after six months after the revolt. And this is the commission that famously first proposed partitioning the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into two states, Jewish and Arab. This is the first time that partition was floated by world powers in any serious way. This is the first time the words ‘Jewish state’ appeared on the diplomatic agenda. So the secret testimonies from this very important commission were classified for 80 years, from 1937 to 2017.”

Laying the groundwork: “The focus of the book is the Arab Revolt, but I think this is as much a Jewish story as an Arab story,” Kessler explained. “This is a period in which the Jews were transformed militarily, economically, politically and psychologically. This is, I think, the moment at which the mainstream Zionist leadership recognized that despite their best efforts to convince the Arabs of Palestine that they weren’t coming to displace anyone, that they were bringing blessings upon everyone, that there was room here for two peoples, that the Arab opposition was such that the fate of this country would have to be determined and maintained by force. I think that was a realization that they were fairly perturbed to discover, but quickly had to make peace with as it were, had to recognize that that was the reality and that they had to adjust accordingly. And by 1939, when the British implement their infamous white paper, which essentially shut the doors to the land of Israel to the doomed Jews of Europe, once that point was reached, the Jews had created the military, economic, political, territorial basis and springboard for establishing the state nearly 10 years later.”

Read the full interview here.