Jeremy Loffredo
When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Benjamin Netanyahu slept in his bedroom. It is a detail buried in a 2017 New York Times profile about how Netanyahu would stay at the Kushner family home in New Jersey during visits to the United States. Jared would move to the basement.¹
On March 9th, 2026, Donald Trump told reporters that his decision to strike Iran was informed by Jared Kushner.² Kushner had warned the president that Iran was about to attack the United States. The Pentagon briefed congressional staff the exact opposite.³ Trump’s own appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center subsequently resigned, writing in his resignation letter: “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel.”⁴
A diplomat with direct knowledge of the recent Iran negotiations told The Guardian that Kushner was not regarded as a neutral American official. He was regarded as an “Israeli asset” who dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.⁵
So who exactly is Jared Kushner, and how did a man with no diplomatic experience, no foreign policy background, and no electoral mandate end up at the center of one of the most consequential military decisions in recent American history?
Donald Trump appointed his son-in-law as a senior White House advisor in 2017, Kushner was handed control over Middle East policy with no diplomatic experience and no relevant background. Within months, he had effectively set up what Rex Tillerson, Trump’s own Secretary of State, would later describe in congressional testimony as a “shadow foreign policy operation.” Kushner was holding private meetings with foreign heads of state, building relationships with Gulf monarchs, and making commitments that the official U.S. government did not know about until after the fact. Tillerson said he raised the issue with Kushner directly and that “not much changed.”⁸
“It makes me angry,” Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “I didn’t have a say. The State Department’s views were never expressed.”⁹
Among the relationships Kushner built during those four years was an unusually close one with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The two communicated regularly via WhatsApp. Kushner met often with MBS outside of official State Department channels, a pattern Tillerson flagged repeatedly and which he said undermined his ability to manage U.S. diplomacy in the region. Kushner also maintained his lifelong personal relationship with Netanyahu throughout, reportedly speaking with him almost daily while simultaneously holding the Middle East policy portfolio for the United States government.
When the first Trump administration ended, those relationships became the foundation of a private equity firm.
The day after the administration ended, Kushner incorporated Affinity Partners. He had no experience in private equity. What he had was four years of relationships built from inside the White House while the official State Department was kept in the dark.
He went to Saudi Arabia and asked for money. Saudi Arabia’s own investment committee recommended rejecting him. Their internal documents, later obtained by journalists and Senate investigators, described Kushner’s management as “inexperienced,” his fees as “excessive,” and his operations as “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” The committee was overruled personally by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.¹⁰
Kushner described the purpose of Affinity Partners to the Wall Street Journal plainly. He wanted to open “an investment corridor between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”¹³ Using Saudi sovereign wealth fund money, Affinity Partners became the single largest shareholder in Phoenix Holdings, Israel’s biggest insurance company. Kushner doubled that stake just days before Trump returned to the White House, describing it as “a decision rooted in my belief in Israel’s resiliency.”¹⁴ An investigation by Middle East Eye found that Phoenix Holdings itself holds shares in dozens of companies the United Nations has identified as operating in illegal West Bank settlements and in occupied Jerusalem.¹⁵
The Senate Finance Committee investigated Affinity Partners and found that it had collected approximately $157 million in management fees from foreign governments while returning zero profits to investors. Senator Ron Wyden wrote to the Attorney General that there was “significant evidence” Kushner had acted as an unregistered foreign agent.¹⁶
By the time Trump returned to power and appointed Kushner as a diplomatic envoy to the Middle East, Kushner was simultaneously the largest shareholder in Israel’s biggest insurance company, the recipient of $2 billion in Saudi sovereign wealth fund money, a family friend of Netanyahu, and the man tasked with representing the United States in nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended the final round of U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva personally, a detail confirmed to The Guardian by three separate sources.¹⁷ Powell assessed that Iran had made a significant offer, that a deal to avoid war was well within reach, and that diplomacy had not been exhausted. Iran’s offer included commitments to down-blend its stockpile of highly enriched uranium under IAEA supervision and a pause on domestic enrichment. Mediators viewed the proposal as a breakthrough. A further round of technical talks had been scheduled in Vienna.
Two days later, the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran. The talks collapsed.
Trump said Kushner had informed his decision to strike, telling him that Iran was about to attack the United States.¹⁸ The Pentagon briefed congressional staff the opposite: Iran had no plans to strike U.S. forces unless it was attacked first.¹⁹ The Defense Intelligence Agency’s own unclassified assessment stated that Iran would not even have the capability to strike the U.S. until 2035 at the earliest.²⁰
Then Joe Kent, Trump’s own appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned. A note of caution is warranted here: Kent is a former CIA officer, and intelligence community figures who make public political statements warrant scrutiny. People with that background carry agendas and their interventions should not be taken at face value simply because they are inconvenient for the administration they are criticizing. With that said, Kent’s account aligns with everything in the documented record. His resignation letter stated: “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel.” He added that all 18 of America’s intelligence agencies had agreed that Iran had no capacity to develop a nuclear bomb.²¹
What the documented record shows is that Trump did not go to war on the advice of the United States intelligence apparatus. He went to war on the advice of his son-in-law — a son-in-law who had Netanyahu sleeping in his childhood bedroom. The entire U.S. security infrastructure pointed in one direction. Kushner pointed in another. Trump followed Kushner.
The first six days of the Iran war cost $11.3 billion in taxpayer dollars, according to Pentagon officials who briefed the Senate in a closed door session first reported by NBC News and confirmed by the New York Times.²³ The Washington Post has reported that the Pentagon is now seeking more than $200 billion in its budget request just for this war.²⁴ When a reporter asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to justify that number, his answer was six words: “It takes money to kill bad guys.”
The man whose childhood home Netanyahu slept in, who ran a shadow foreign policy from inside the White House while the Secretary of State was kept in the dark, who became the largest shareholder in Israel’s biggest insurance company using Saudi money, was seen by allied diplomats as an Israeli asset advancing a foreign government’s interests while nominally representing the United States. The documented record — from the Pentagon, from the intelligence community, from Britain’s own national security adviser — contradicts every justification given for the war he helped start. A war that has already cost Americans more than $11 billion in its first six days, with the Pentagon seeking $200 billion more. He was seen leaving the White House as recently as yesterday, which means he remains, without any electoral mandate or public accountability.
Notes
New York Times, June 6, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/politics/jared-kushner-netanyahu.html
CNN Politics, March 3, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/trump-iran-war-explanations-goals
Newsweek, March 4, 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/pentagon-undercuts-white-houses-iran-preemptive-strike-claim-report-11602263
CNN Politics, March 17, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/17/politics/joe-kent-resigns-iran-war
The Guardian, March 17, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/17/uk-security-adviser-attended-us-iran-talks
NBC News, March 10, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/first-6-days-iran-war-cost-11-billion-pentagon-tells-senators-rcna263060
Washington Post, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/03/Pentagon-seeks-more-than-200-billion-iran-war
The Daily Beast, June 28, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/rex-tillerson-jared-kushner-hijacked-us-foreign-policy-angry-former-secretary-of-state-says
Ibid.
Middle East Eye, April 11, 2022. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-sovereign-wealth-fund-panel-objected-kushner-fund
Washington Post, November 16, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/cia-concludes-saudi-crown-prince-ordered-jamal-khashoggis-assassination/2018/11/16/98c89fe6-e9b2-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html
Popular Information, November 13, 2024. https://popular.info/p/jared-kushners-3-billion-conflict
Times of Israel, September 6, 2023. https://www.timesofisrael.com/jared-kushners-saudi-backed-private-equity-fund-clinches-first-investment-in-israel/
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 15, 2025. https://www.jta.org/2025/01/15/default/jared-kushner-set-to-double-stake-in-leading-israeli-financial-firm
Middle East Eye, March 14, 2025. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gulf-states-linked-through-kushner-israeli-businesses-un-settlements-blacklist
Senate Finance Committee, June 12, 2024. https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-probes-kushner-firm-payments-from-gulf-states-potential-fara-loophole
TRT World, March 21, 2026. https://www.trtworld.com/article/35c2cb3e672c
CNN Politics, March 3, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/trump-iran-war-explanations-goals
Newsweek, March 4, 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/pentagon-undercuts-white-houses-iran-preemptive-strike-claim-report-11602263
CNN Politics, March 2, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/02/politics/hegseth-rubio-trump-messaging
CNN Politics, March 17, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/17/politics/joe-kent-resigns-iran-war
The Guardian, March 17, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/17/uk-security-adviser-attended-us-iran-talks
NBC News, March 10, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/first-6-days-iran-war-cost-11-billion-pentagon-tells-senators-rcna263060
Washington Post, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/03/Pentagon-seeks-more-than-200-billion-iran-war
Brown University Costs of War Project. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar
Time, March 16, 2026. https://time.com/article/2026/03/16/what-us-spending-on-the-iran-war-could-fund-instead/
MSNBC, March 2026. https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/jared-kushners-conflicts-of-interest-become-even-more-controversial
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https://jeremyloffredo.substack.com/p/president-jared-kushner?