What money bought

SLEAZE, bribery, and secret alliances allegedly marked Trump’s Middle East policy in his first term, and set him on the road to an illegal and unwinnable war against Iran in his second. The central characters in that sordid set of machinations were his own son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, a few Gulf rulers, and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — all working towards a plan to redraw the political map of West Asia. Iran was the adversary to be contained, and it was on this that they converged: a plan to “blow up Obama’s Iran nuclear deal”. Billions of dollars were allegedly paid to Kushner in what may be the biggest scandal in recent history — one that best defines the link between money and Trump’s conduct of his Middle East policy, and which has pushed the entire region into an intractable conflict with global consequences.

A recently published book, Princes and Thieves by investigative journalist Matthew Cole, provides startling details on how billions of dollars were allegedly transferred into accounts — managed by Kushner — by Gulf sheikhdoms, to implement a plan to break Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and change the “political map of the Middle East”. The author supports his view of the transactions with details drawn from accounts hacked by a Western intelligence agency, though Kushner has called the allegations fabricated. According to the author, the transfers began in 2017 and were well underway by the spring of 2018, during Trump’s first term — when Kushner served as the president’s special envoy on the Middle East. While he had very close relations with Israel, he also cultivated strong business and diplomatic connections with willing Gulf sheikhdoms to allegedly pay for influence with the Trump administration. >A recent book details how…