Doha, Qatar, December 14, 2019. Ivanka Trump strolls at ease through the aisles of the Doha Forum. Sometimes greeted by the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, then by the Emir of Qatar, Tamim Al-Thani, who granted her an audience, Donald Trump’s daughter fascinates everyone. At the heart of this forum which brings together the cream of world diplomacy, she seems to act as if she represented her father. We are at a time when the Abraham Accords, which aim to open diplomatic channels between Israel and Arab countries in exchange for bright economic prospects, are close to being signed.
Behind this project, a man, Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Trump and beloved husband of Ivanka. The couple is close. And when Jared asks Donald Trump for something, the latter has difficulty refusing, firstly because he has never refused anything to his daughter. Very early on, Jared Kushner took the opportunity to develop his own businesses in parallel with his diplomatic missions until he rose to the rank of billionaire. After all, nothing is taboo for Trump in this sphere, so why deprive yourself. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Israel end up considering Kushner as an asset that they can exploit, a man likely to defend their interests with the president.
Trump is not new when it comes to combining family, friends and business. A few years earlier, when he had forgotten his wallet during a lunch break, lawyer Steve Witkoff had bought him a ham and butter. This was the starting point of a friendship that would make Witkoff Putin’s favorite American, but also the chief negotiator on Iranian nuclear power as well as on Gaza. We could even think for a time that the duo he ended up forming with Kushner would redraw the contours of American diplomacy in the world.
The results of the family business ultimately turned out to be very meager
It was going a bit quickly. The place taken by the two men to speak on behalf of the United States of America in the world could certainly have masked their real effectiveness for a time. As for Steve Witkoff, the fact that following his first visit to Moscow, he was unable to correctly pronounce the names of the four oblasts conquered by Russia in Ukraine should have alerted us. Unfortunate, when we know that the mission entrusted to him is to put an end to a fratricidal conflict between two peoples with exceptional memories. Besides the fact that the rise of the Witkoff-Kushner tandem was to the detriment of traditional diplomats, the results of the family business ultimately turned out to be very meager. On Ukraine first. No significant progress has emerged despite Trump’s campaign promise to end the war in 24 hours, despite dozens of hours of meetings.
Lobbying work
On Iran, the results are cruelly empty. We know that Steve Witkoff and especially Jared Kushner played a fundamental role in forcing Donald Trump to go to war. For Kushner, this is due to the business ties he has forged with Iran’s enemies, using his influence with Trump to convince Gulf countries to invest in his investment fund, Affinity Partners. In particular, his relationship with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, whose antagonism with Iran is notorious, may be behind Kushner’s lobbying of Trump to declare war. His relationship with Benyamin Netanyahu is as significant as it is old. In the 1990s, during a trip to the United States, the Israeli prime minister visited the Kushners at their New Jersey home.
It is proven that before February 28, the date Trump launched the conflict, Kushner carried out insistent lobbying for entry into war, arguing in particular to the American president that Iran was only a few weeks, or even a few days, away from obtaining the nuclear bomb. Trump, like his predecessors, heard this argument many times from Benjamin Netanyahu. But there, he hears it every day within the family circle, and therefore probably through his daughter herself.
There is no indication that Jared Kushner can be held responsible for entering the war, but he clearly supported and maintained a climate of suspicion on principle at a time when the United States and Iran were negotiating nuclear power. Leaving aside Kushner’s bellicose inclinations, it is also clear that in the discussions with the Iranians that have taken place periodically since Trump’s return to power, some approximations by both men, Kushner and Witkoff, have led the Trump administration to miss crucial opportunities to recognize Tehran’s signs of flexibility. The two men seem to have little mastery of the principles of nuclear physics, which in itself should not prevent them from reaching an agreement based on the advice of the specialists around them. The problem is that the Iranians realized this. The strength of the Trump team took a hit.
To avoid a disaster in the midterm elections, Trump must also correct his course vis-à-vis foreign powers
Will the Iranian affair ruin Trump’s second term? It’s a little early to say. The resumption of negotiations by the American vice-president, however, indicates one thing. Trump puts his number two in the balance to wash away the affront of a lost war. In addition to the fact that he must at all costs reestablish trust with his Maga base, to which Vance is close, to avoid a disaster in the mid-term elections in the fall, Trump must also correct his course vis-à-vis foreign powers. At this point, Witkoff and Kushner are still part of the negotiations, but they are less heard from. The Iranian war changed a lot of things. Tehran emerges strengthened, because even if an agreement is reached, the Iranians have perfectly measured the power they have over the Strait of Hormuz. It also seems that Trump-style family diplomacy was one of the collateral victims.
