The Iran talks expose the collapse of US diplomacy

The purpose of a professional diplomatic corps is to ensure that a nation has negotiators acting on its behalf whose only stake in the outcome of their work is the welfare of their nation. As the United States continues what may be the most critical negotiations of the second Trump administration – those with Iran – its negotiating team is led by the vice president of the US, and by two real estate investors with a side hustle in cryptocurrency. Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff are not the natural fit for a high-stakes matter of international diplomacy. The former’s association with foreign policy came only as a function of his familial association with Donald Trump through marriage to his daughter Ivanka. It is an association that has expanded in consequence for his family, with Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, going from a felony conviction in 2005 to a presidential pardon in 2020 to appointment as US ambassador to France in 2025. Witkoff’s involvement in international affairs is even more recent, with his greatest achievement in Trump’s statement announcing his 2025 appointment as US Middle East envoy being his leadership in “financing, repositioning, and construction of over 70 properties”. Although Trump has argued that experience in business negotiations is transferable to diplomacy, inexperience is not the only qualification deficit for Kushner and Witkoff. In 2021, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, an investment firm that has, according to 2025 reporting, more than $5bn in assets under management, the majority of it from the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund, with further significant holdings by funds under the direction of the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. As recently as March 2026, at the height of the US-Iran war, The New York Times reported that Kushner was seeking to raise further investments from governments in the Gulf. Meanwhile, Witkoff, whose real estate holdings had long received investment from the Middle East, invested seed money in 2024 in a cryptocurrency venture launched by members of the Trump family and his sons Alex and Zach. That venture, World Liberty Financial, went on to sell a 49 percent stake in itself to Aryam Investment, an Emirati company linked to UAE National Security Adviser Tahnoon bin Zayed. The deal closed on January 16, 2025. Four days later, Donald Trump was sworn in as president.