Jared Kushner has returned to a central diplomatic role for the Trump White House, spearheading renewed efforts to achieve a lasting peace agreement in the Middle East. His reemergence underscores both his enduring influence in the region and his expanding business network across the Gulf.
Once one of President Trump’s most trusted advisers during his first term, Kushner had largely stayed out of the political spotlight during the second administration. Now, however, he has reappeared to help lead one of Trump’s most ambitious foreign policy undertakings.
“I put Jared there because he’s a very smart person and he knows the region, knows the people, knows a lot of the players,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Thursday.
Kushner is working closely with special envoy Steve Witkoff to finalize a deal that would see Hamas release 20 living hostages from the October 7, 2023, attacks while Israel agrees to temporarily halt military operations in Gaza.
Although Kushner has no official title in the administration, he has been serving as an informal adviser behind the scenes. Two U.S. officials said Thursday evening that Witkoff has been keeping Kushner regularly updated on the peace negotiations, and that his involvement has intensified in recent days as the agreement nears completion.
According to the officials, Kushner and Witkoff were the primary architects of Trump’s detailed 20-point peace framework aimed at ending the conflict.
Both men were subsequently sent to Egypt to help finalize the deal, which Trump announced Wednesday night on Truth Social. Since the public announcement, they have met with top officials from both Egypt and Israel to push the agreement forward.
“They’re an incredible team working together, facing some substantial impediments to even being there,” national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during Thursday’s Cabinet session.
Even as he has stepped into this informal diplomatic role, Kushner has simultaneously expanded his business ventures in the Gulf, strengthening ties with Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
White House officials have dismissed questions about potential conflicts of interest arising from these business connections. When pressed by reporters, press secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced the scrutiny as “despicable.”
“Jared is donating his energy and his time to our government, to the president of the United States, to secure world peace. And that is a very noble thing,” Leavitt said, commending Kushner’s relationships across the Middle East.
Kushner first cultivated those connections during Trump’s initial term, when he played a pivotal role in shaping U.S. Middle East policy.
He led the administration’s original peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, hoping to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. That plan, unveiled in January 2020 under the title Prosperity to Peace, spanned 181 pages and centered on using economic development to promote political stability among Palestinians.
Although the proposal never materialized, it laid the groundwork for the Abraham Accords — the 2020 diplomatic breakthrough that saw the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain establish formal relations with Israel after the U.S. persuaded Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to halt plans to annex parts of the West Bank.
The Abraham Accords remain one of Trump’s most celebrated achievements, and he has repeatedly criticized the Nobel Peace Prize committee for failing to recognize his role in brokering the agreements.
In the years since, Kushner’s private-sector ventures have flourished in tandem with those diplomatic relationships. Through his firm Affinity Partners, he has reportedly secured $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia, $1.2 billion from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and Abu Dhabi-based Lunate, and recently partnered with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to acquire Electronic Arts in a $55 billion deal that included Silver Lake as a co-investor.
These expanding business ties have unfolded alongside Trump’s renewed diplomatic push in the region. The president’s first major overseas trip of his second term took him to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE this past May, as he continued to advocate for an expanded Abraham Accords. However, both Trump and Kushner have acknowledged that Saudi Arabia will not move forward until Israel’s war in Gaza concludes and progress toward a Palestinian state is visible.
Kushner’s public profile grew further in late August, when he joined former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for internal White House discussions about rebuilding Gaza after the conflict.
“When he and Tony Blair went to see the president, that was reflecting, I think, what was a fair amount of behind-the-scenes work that had gone into developing this plan,” said Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat and fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, during a panel on Thursday.
The urgency of those talks increased after Israel’s strikes on Hamas officials in Doha in September, prompting Gulf states to outline key conditions for an end to hostilities and a future Palestinian state.
“I have little doubt that he was a major force in terms of moving to get this into a higher level of focus for the president,” Ross said of Kushner, noting he has spoken with him multiple times during Trump’s current term.
“Obviously, Steve Witkoff saw Jared as being a major help, a major asset, and his involvement seemed to be timed with much more of a high-level effort to get it done.”
Still, some observers have expressed reservations about the unconventional structure of the peace initiative. Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and a former Palestinian negotiator, said that relying on figures outside of government demonstrates both innovation and risk.
“First of all, for me, this is a sign, frankly, that this is the kind of staff work that usually is done within the administration. It shows us some of the kind of challenges moving forward in terms of the work that usually is done in government now as being from the outside government,” he said.
“That said, I want to emphasize how strong the relations that Kushner and Blair have in the region, and the more I see them involved, the more I have a sense that the region is on board with this, at least at the leadership level.”
Kushner told The New York Times that his private-sector perspective has actually made him more effective in these negotiations, drawing parallels between diplomacy and his prior work in real estate.
“The experience that Steve and I have as deal guys is that you have to understand people… You have to be able to kind of get the bottom line out of them, and then see who do you think is playing games, and how much room do you have to push things?” he told the paper.
“A lot of the people who do this are history professors, because they have a lot of experience, or diplomats. It’s just different being deal guys — just a different sport.”
A senior U.S. official told The Hill that after the first phase of the peace deal is completed, Kushner is expected to return to his familiar role as an “available adviser” to the president.
{Matzav.com}
