Compare and contrast

In the last few minutes, I've run across two widely divergent views of Jared Kushner's role as a broker of Middle East power dynamics.

Harvard constitutional and international law professor Noah Feldman, writing at Bloomberg, seems rather impressed with Kushner's ability to make the most of a long shot:

It was easy to miss it, what with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson being fired and President Donald Trump fueling rumors of more personnel shake-ups. But last week Jared Kushner, presidential adviser and son-in-law, presided over a highly unusual White House conference on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Who participated was noteworthy: Israel was there, alongside Arab states with which it does not have diplomatic relations, such as Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Who didn’t participate was noteworthy too: the Palestinians, who have been boycotting Trump since his announcement that the U.S. will have an embassy in Jerusalem.

The meaning of the conference can only be deciphered in relation to the Kushner-led peace effort. That long-shot effort is alive, notwithstanding Kushner’s defeat by chief of staff John Kelly in the White House palace intrigue over security clearance.

He says that the thrust of the Kushner approach is to put specific issues, in particular the Israel-Palestine question, into a broader regional perspective, but that, ironically the way to do that is to cultivate one particular key relationship:

His laser-like focus has been on Saudi Arabia, which is signaling that it’s prepared to develop warm and even official ties to Israel if only peace can be established. The basic idea is for the Saudis and other Gulf states to pressure the Palestinians to the table. Then Trump and Kushner will deliver the Israelis -- or at least try.

Other negotiators in the past have sought to regionalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kushner has gotten further than any of his predecessors on this front.

His strategy has been to form an extremely close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is expected to become king in the near future when his father abdicates.

This relationship is a two-way street. MBS, as the Saudi prince is invariably called outside the country, is in the process of attempting a high-risk transformation of the Saudi monarchy, from a power-sharing arrangement among siblings to centralized kingship dominated by one man. For that, MBS needs unprecedented personal backing from the White House. And Kushner and Trump have delivered exactly that. Witness their Oval Office meeting Tuesday.

There are a few key phrases in Feldman's piece that have a funny smell to them. Notice, for example, the neat and tidy way he characterizes what MBS is up to domestically as a "high-risk transformation of the Saudi monarchy, from a poor-sharing arrangement among siblings to centralized kingship dominated by one man." Then there is this odd line:

If this is a nonstarter for Netanyahu in his politically and ethically weakened condition, then all Kushner’s successes with MBS won’t be enough to deliver a deal. 

Well, now, wait a minute. If Netanyahu is politically and ethically weakened, why is his deeming the initiative a nonstarter the dealbreaker? Wouldn't an Israeli leader's position have to be stable for that to be so?

Now, about that "transformation . . . to a centralized kingship." Susan Wright at Red State offers some rather chilling backstory:

Kushner had a particular interest in intelligence involving the Middle East. At first blush, it may not seem so unusual, considering President Trump has announced that his son-in-law would be the person to bring peace to the Middle East.

The Intercept, however, has published a report of the uncomfortable entanglement of Kushner with Saudi royalty.

In June, Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman ousted his cousin, then-Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and took his place as next in line to the throne, upending the established line of succession. In the months that followed, the President’s Daily Brief contained information on Saudi Arabia’s evolving political situation, including a handful of names of royal family members opposed to the crown prince’s power grab, according to the former White House official and two U.S. government officials with knowledge of the report. Like many others interviewed for this story, they declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about sensitive matters to the press.

In late October, Jared Kushner made an unannounced trip to Riyadh, catching some intelligence officials off guard. “The two princes are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy,” the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported at the time.

That alone should be concerning enough, but it gets better [worse?].

What exactly Kushner and the Saudi royal talked about in Riyadh may be known only to them, but after the meeting, Crown Prince Mohammed told confidants that Kushner had discussed the names of Saudis disloyal to the crown prince, according to three sources who have been in contact with members of the Saudi and Emirati royal families since the crackdown. Kushner, through his attorney’s spokesperson, denies having done so.

Really? What could be the purpose of whipping up conflict in the region by giving the names of those “disloyal” to the prince?

Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell scoffed at the report, calling it “false and ridiculous.”
Whatever the case, a week after Kushner returned from his little field trip, on November 4, the crown prince (MBS to his friends) did a bit of housecleaning, launching what he called an “anti-corruption crackdown.” Dozens of members of the royal family were arrested by the Saudi government, imprisoning them in the Ritz-Carlton Riyadh.
At least one was reported to have been tortured.
The odd (yeah, right) thing is that these were individuals listed in the President’s Daily Brief.

It is likely that Crown Prince Mohammed would have known who his critics were without Kushner mentioning them, a U.S. government official who declined to be identified pointed out. The crown prince may also have had his own reasons for saying that Kushner shared information with him, even if that wasn’t true. Just the appearance that Kushner did so would send a powerful message to the crown prince’s allies and enemies that his actions were backed by the U.S. government.

One of the people MBS told about the discussion with Kushner was UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, according to a source who talks frequently to confidants of the Saudi and Emirati rulers. MBS bragged to the Emirati crown prince and others that Kushner was “in his pocket,” the source told The Intercept.

That would be the same UAE Crown Prince who was present in the Seychelles meeting with Trump supporter, Erik Prince, as well as several Russian officials, and an Arab spy.
President Trump can give authority to Kushner to disclose what’s in those briefings, but to do so and meddle in the tense situation going on in another nation is a bit much. If Trump did not give Kushner authority to give over such information, he’s on the wrong side of the law, regarding the sharing of classified information.

In the months that followed, the arrestees were coerced into signing overbillions in personal assets to the Saudi government. In December, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that Maj. Gen. Ali al-Qahtani had been tortured to death in the Ritz. Qahtani’s body showed signs of mistreatment, including a neck that was “twisted unnaturally as though it had been broken,” bruises, and “burn marks that appeared to be from electric shocks,” the New York Times reported earlier this month.

Nasty stuff. 

Wright goes on to discuss the concerns Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster had about this freelancing approach to foreign policy, as well as the role Kushner family-business finances had in Trump and Kushner backing the UAE and Saudi Arabia over Qatar when things heated up among those nations.

In light of this, Feldman's assessment of Kushner's role seems awfully white-bread.

He may have gotten a Saudi major general tortured to death.