Carrick Ryan

When analysing the reasons that Trump has so obediently followed Netanyahu into war, there is proclivity to suggest blackmail or conspiracy, but the truth might be closer to home.

Jared Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law, and possibly one of the most influential voices in his inner circle.

Trump has called Kushner “the smartest guy I’ve ever seen in my life”. Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff claimed Kushner was “the only person” Trump truly listened to, with one official even calling him a “defacto President”.

It is also a verified fact that Kushner has been close family friends with Netanyahu for decades, even having Netanyahu stay at his family home when Jared was a child.

Kushner has stated “Israel is a place that’s very important to me… it’s part of my identity” and has donated millions to institutions set up to establish illegal settlements in the West Bank. During Trump’s first term, Kushner was instrumental in the US moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in defiance of international law.

But it’s not just Israel clouding Kushner’s priorities. In 2021, the Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund committed more than $2 billion to Kushner’s private equity firm. Meaning that Iran’s greatest ideological adversary is Kushner’s most valuable financial backer by some margin.

This is a man who possibly has more influence over Trump than anyone else in the administration, and he is riddled with competing allegiances.

It is therefore fairly relevant that Kushner was publicly calling for the US to launch a war against Iran as far back in September 2024, when he penned a lengthy essay that I don’t think got enough attention. It’s worth noting these paragraphs.

“I have spent countless hours studying Hezbollah and there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade them was possible.

This is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel. Iran spent the last forty years building this capability as its deterrent.”

…
“The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight.”

This is the man Trump chose to lead US negotiations with Iran, and it was as a result of his feedback from those ongoing negotiations that Trump approved the strikes that killed the Ayatollah and kicked this war off.

This raises serious questions; what did Kushner tell Trump about the negotiations, and how accurate was that information? How seriously was he even interested in peace? But perhaps most importantly, with Netanyahu and the Saudi Crown Prince still urging Trump to commit to a larger war, how influential is Kushner going to be in deciding one of the most important foreign policy decisions in modern US history, and whose interests will he be prioritising?