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Anything with significant quantities of rare earths - which describes a lot of modern military technology. Israel has plenty of deposits, but they don't have the infrastructure required to refine and process them into usable material. To the best of my knowledge Israel doesn't actually have any mines at all (plenty of quarries, but good luck turning stone into hypersonic missiles or drones), which will make resupplying the metal used for modern military technologies a bit difficult.
Who?
China's not going to help - China wants to make sure the Israeli security situation is as miserable as possible, because that means US resources and attention will be diverted there and away from Taiwan. Additionally, the comments made by Chinese officials regarding the current conflict are very much not indicative of future support for Israel - they have explicitly supported the right of Palestine to full statehood and development. France? I wouldn't pin my hopes on France coming to the rescue given their own large internal problems. They can't even supply the Ukrainians with enough materiel to fight off Russia. As for Russia itself? Russia supplies the air-defence systems used by Iran and has been accepting a lot of help from them with regards to drone technology and drone warfare. Russia is the largest military partner of Israel's biggest regional threat - I don't think they're going to be much help.
Who's left? What other nation can both supply advanced modern military materiel, has plenty of said materiel to spare and the capacity to open a secure land route to get that technology to Israel? Without the US guaranteeing global shipping and commercial trade, or paying Egypt to stay friendly to Israel, how exactly does this mysterious nation even get their technology to Israel? Furthermore, how's Israel going to pay for it? Right now they've duped the Americans into paying them to receive free weapons, but that isn't going to work on China. In the same future where the US has abandoned them, there's no doubt going to be a cessation of remittances and other support from American jews to Israel - so the budget is going to be taking a significant hit already.
Historically, the way all other nations solved the problem of having an unsustainably large population, 95% reduction in available energy and an economy unable to support their military is by collapsing or experiencing massive famines and starvation.
The nations surrounding them, and by simply closing their borders to land/air traffic. Iran is more than capable of shutting down their shipping infrastructure, even if they have to send the weaponry to the Houthis to do it.
I assume that when the US stops paying them to be nice to Israel, they will stop being nice to Israel. I don't think they'll necessarily attack them, but charging obscene fees to render those imports uneconomical when they don't just sabotage or block them is well within the bounds of what they could do.
This is a problem for all countries that aren't China right now - but I think most of those countries will survive.
This isn't really a consideration at play if the US is no longer Israel's patron, is it?
I'm not suggesting France will "come to their rescue," I'm suggesting France will sell them military hardware. France's support of Ukraine hasn't halted French arms sales elsewhere (e.g. they are still attempting to sell the Rafale to various parties, I believe). You can make of that what you will but "France can't/won't sell people military hardware" doesn't seem correct.
Russia has relatively good relations with Israel (and notably Israel has declined to assist Ukraine) and a history of cooperating with Israel on military technology. Russia also doesn't have much qualms about selling to both sides of a conflict, I don't think, and have (allegedly) agreed not to sell arms to Iran due to agreements with Israel in the past, so I'm skeptical that the Russian relationship with Iran would actually prevent them from selling arms to Israel.
Why? I don't think American Jews are sending support to Israel because the US government suggests it.
Why do you think this is necessary? Israel and Egypt are trade partners, Egypt is the first Middle Eastern nation to recognize Israel (getting close to 50 years ago) and both the Arabism and the Islamism that precipitated past Israeli-Egyptian conflict have waned somewhat. I don't see it as impossible, but I don't see why it's inevitable, either.
My understanding is that the majority of Israel's imports are via sea.
Why hasn't Iran done this, then? It sounds to me like Iran could have destroyed Israel already without needing to develop nuclear weapons. This would probably have been a better idea than letting Israel bomb them nonstop for days. What's stopping them?
I would note that the Houthis are in Yemen. Yemen and Iran are both too far away from the Mediterranean to close shipping lanes there with the ease that they can close shipping lanes through Suez. What mechanism do you propose for shutting down shipping? Missile strikes on port facilities, maybe?
How are the neighboring nations going to charge fees on goods imported via the Mediterranean traveling through international waters? Cutting them off in Suez would be annoying, but it would not be the end of the world - the Houthis already accomplished a partial closure of the Red Sea, rerouting many ships around the Horn of Africa, and Israel didn't collapse.
It sounds to me in your telling like losing the United States as a patron would be irritating and expensive - does it really follow that Israel will cease to exist as a state?
You're right here, but that's like saying a minor infection isn't worth worrying about while leaving out the context that the sufferer is immunocompromised. If Luxembourg and Monaco lose access to the rare earths market, they're not really going to care - but they don't exist in an incredibly dangerous environment where they are surrounded by hostile powers. If Israel loses their military edge they will be in an extremely bad position, extremely quickly. While they do have nuclear weapons, using them would be suicide - not only do they want to claim the land of the people around them (and irradiated wasteland is worthless territory), using nuclear weapons so close to their own country would cause so much damage to themselves via fallout that it could render the entire country uninhabitable... to say nothing of the political consequences associated with being the first non-USA country to use nuclear weapons offensively.
You're actually correct here - the only way I can salvage this argument is to determine exactly how amicable the split is. If the zoomer nazis take power and decide to demand a refund from Israel for all the money that was sent by bribed politicians in the past the economic situation is going to be even worse, but they might be able to do business with China in that case.
We're talking about a time several years into the future at the very least, and the trendline for French military manufacturing (and a great many other statistics) isn't terribly inspiring. They might make a few deals, but the ability of the French to manufacture materiel is so anemic in comparison to the Iran axis that I don't think it'll make much of a difference.
If Israel did in fact lend assistance to Ukraine that assistance would be returned in triple with assistance to Iran and Hezbollah. That's a matter of self interest... not to mention the fact that NATO resources are being diverted away from Ukraine TO Israel - actually lending that assistance would be a bad joke.
I can find it plausible that Russia didn't sell arms to Iran in the past, but now?
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-delivers-mig-29-jets-iran-air-force-10479982
Russia and Iran are collaborating in depth and their relationship is significantly stronger now than it was in the past - and China's helping them out too. If Russia did actually go on to assist Israel, they'd be able to decide who wins and who loses by simply turning off one side's equipment remotely... and I don't think they'd support Israel over Iran. Either way, even if Russia does decide to completely ignore their broader goals and arm both sides, Israel merely having the same level of technological sophistication as their far larger and more resource-rich enemies is not a particularly good situation for Israel. Israel currently requires a technical edge over their opponents due to their much smaller size, population and resource base - being put on the same or even lower level than their chief opponents would put them in an extremely dangerous position.
No, they're sending support to Israel because the US government allows it - and in the hypothetical future where the US has abandoned Israel, I don't think the government will allow wealthy citizens to simply send all their money to a hostile foreign power.
Because the US is doing it right now. If Egypt would do those things without being paid, why are they being paid? I sometimes do extra work for my employer when I get a call after hours, but I'm not going to do shit if they tell me that I'm no longer getting paid.
Iran hasn't done this because they can perceive that the situation only gets better for them over time. If they blew up Israel right now the US would attack them, and while they could probably survive a conventional attack it'd cause immense amounts of damage and wipe out the global economy. If they wait, the US will continue to decline in influence and power while their own situation gets better and better. Their military manufacturing is substantially lower cost and more distributed than Israel and the US, and when you include the lead-up time to the west spinning up their manufacturing sectors again they are likely going to maintain that lead for another ten years or so - and ten years of stockpiling arms is going to lead to a very big disparity in forces.
Could Iran destroy Israel today? Probably not, and even if every other nation in the Middle East joined in it would be a pyrrhic victory at best - Israel may get destroyed, but they have publicly stated their intent to just murder everyone around them in nuclear fire on the way out (look up the Samson option if you're unaware of this).
As for letting them bomb them nonstop for days...did they? I was under the impression that Iran actually did manage to strike back, but I have no idea how effective it actually was given the censorship of the damage reports from Israeli media. I've read enough analyses about the situation that I think Iran probably landed a significant blow, on top of severely depleting interceptor stocks - but I don't think this is really worth litigating because the fog of war is still too thick.
I used the houthis as an example - I think that Iran would be able to find or manufacture a dissident group close enough to be able to harass shipping with drones and missile strikes. Iran would be capable of destroying port facilities with missile strikes, but at that point you're already in all-out war.
I was referring to hypothetical land routes under the assumption that shipping was ruled out. Having only a single viable means of resupplying or trading with the outside world renders you extremely vulnerable when you're in a dangerous security situation.
Absolutely - currently, Israel is already facing steep and significant pressure. One of their major ports has gone bankrupt, they're facing renewed boycott and sanction efforts, major Israeli leaders are wanted for arrest in ways that mean they're unable to travel to large parts of the world and the nation is now broadly hated all over the world (except in India apparently).
If Israel wasn't facing any significant problems, had a healthy and sustainable economy, a strong military with no reliance on foreign or imported technology, access to a wide variety of trade routes and good relations with all of their neighbours, losing the US as patron would indeed just be expensive and annoying as the flow of free cash gets cut off. But none of that is true for Israel, and they don't have a viable replacement for what they'd lose in that situation. Having your crutches taken away from you isn't a problem if you're capable of walking on your own two feet - but it is a big problem if you aren't.
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