Middle East Strategy: Works for the Base but Not for the World

Donald Trump believes he is having a very good day. His repetitive “witch hunt” label against the Robert Mueller investigation is gaining traction, solidifying virtually his entire Republican constituency (well beyond just his base) against Mueller. This is making impeachment highly unlikely and suggesting wide popular support for the President’s resisting any Mueller attempt to subpoena him, which would prompt an instant constitutional crisis. That is unless Donald Trump doesn’t remove Mueller first and stop that investigation anyway, with increasing suggestions from Republicans in Congress that they are now prepared just to look the other way, Senate Intelligence Committee report notwithstanding. All this as the Donald defies the world on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Jared Kushner and family also seem to be having a very good day in restructuring financing for one of their properties that no one else seems to want… with a little help from the Middle East. With no real business reason to cover an obvious hard dollar shortfall in the Kushner empire, one would have to believe that there are “other reasons” for a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund to waste money on a bad Kushner investment. Hmmm. Wonder what they have in mind? “The company controlled by the family of the White House adviser Jared Kushner is close to receiving a bailout of its troubled flagship building by a company with financial ties to the government of Qatar, according to executives briefed on the deal.

“Charles Kushner, head of the Kushner Companies, is in advanced talks with Brookfield Asset Management over a partnership to take control of the 41-story aluminum-clad tower in Midtown Manhattan, 666 Fifth Avenue, according to two real estate executives who have been briefed on the pending deal but were not authorized to discuss it. Brookfield is a publicly traded company, and its real estate arm, Brookfield Property Partners, is partly owned by the Qatari government, through the Qatar Investment Authority…

“The Qatar Investment Authority bought a $1.8 billion stake in Brookfield Property Partners in 2014, and is the second-largest investor in the company, ranking only behind Brookfield Asset Management…

“Charles and Jared Kushner bought the tower at 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007, when, with a partner, they borrowed $1.75 billion for the purchase. The tower served as the price of admission to elite Manhattan real estate circles for a developer previously known for building and operating suburban garden apartment complexes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania… But if the father and son team believed that they had purchased a real estate trophy in one of the most desirable locations in the city, the debt-laden tower turned out to be more of an albatross.

“At the time they bought it, the building only generated enough cash to pay two-thirds of their annual debt payments. But they were betting on a quick turnaround and a big jump in rents… The Kushners sold 666 Fifth Avenue’s prime asset — its Fifth Avenue retail space — for $525 million. But office rents fell during the recession, and two of the building’s biggest tenants left... In 2012 the Kushners were forced to restructure their loans, and Vornado Realty Trust bought 49.5 percent of the building’s office space and gave the Kushners an $80 million high-interest loan. Vornado later bought the Fifth Avenue retail space for $707 million.

“In late 2016, Charles Kushner and his son were close to a much different kind of deal with Anbang, a giant Chinese insurance company with ties to the country’s ruling elite, and Mr. Al-Thani. That plan involved demolishing the existing building at 666 Fifth Avenue and erecting a $7.5 billion luxury super tower. But the deal collapsed a year ago, amid criticism from legislators over the connection between Jared Kushner’s political role and the family business.” New York Times, May 17th. Enter Qatar. This is how a plutocracy is supposed to work. Just the way it does in Putin’s Russia.

Meanwhile, Europe is preparing to defy Donald Trump’s mission to punish Iran (which clearly is a malevolent force in the region), beginning by his withdrawing the United States from the UN-sponsored six-party nuclear accord and by imposing new and escalating sanctions against Iran and potentially other nations that deal with Iran: “The EU has put itself on a collision course with the US over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran, as major European firms started to pull out of the country to avoid being hit by sanctions.

“In an attempt to shield EU companies doing business with Iran, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said he would turn to a plan last used to protect businesses working in Cuba before a US trade embargo was lifted on the Latin American country.

“‘We will begin the ‘blocking statute’ process, which aims to neutralise the extraterritorial effects of US sanctions in the EU. We must do it and we will do it tomorrow [Friday] morning at 10.30,’ he said at the end of a summit in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia… The EU is seeking to keep Iran in the 2015 accord by safeguarding the economic benefits Tehran gained in return for giving up its nuclear programme.

“The ‘blocking statute’ is a 1996 regulation that prohibits EU companies and courts from complying with foreign sanctions laws and stipulates that no foreign court judgments based on these laws have any effect in the EU.” The Guardian UK, May 17th.

Meanwhile, escalating anger in the Middle East seems to be the tip of the iceberg of growing militancy that is being triggered by the United States’ celebrating the opening of its new embassy in Jerusalem (and removing that designation from the former embassy in Tel Aviv). The symbolism is not lost on the rest of the world, noting that this move effectively erodes the potential of a two state solution between Palestine and Israel that would have, of necessity dealt with the status of Jerusalem in any relevant negotiations.

The relatively moderate Palestinian Authority, run by President Mahmoud Abbas (operating out of the West Bank and constantly struggling against the Hamas extremists in Gaza), made it clear that by ceding Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the United States no longer had any role or credibility as a peace-mediator in any negotiations between Palestine and Israel. Most of Europe seemed to echo support for Abbas and frustration at the American position, which seemed destined further to destabilize the region. Almost instantly, simmering violence then completely exploded in Gaza on May 14th (pictured above), substantiating some of the worst fears about the region. Israel responded with powerful force.

US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, made it clear that the United States would veto any condemnation of Israel’s tactics and admonished the Security Council that Israel’s response to the Gaza violence was nothing more than a rather restrained effort to defend her border, less than any other nation would do, she claimed. Citing the utter hopelessness and physical destruction that constitutes modern Gaza, United Nations officials totally disagreed with her position:

“The UN human rights chief says Israel used ‘wholly disproportionate’ force against Palestinian border protests which have left over 100 people dead… Zeid Raad al-Hussein told a meeting in Geneva that Gazans were effectively ‘caged in a toxic slum’ and Gaza's occupation by Israel had to end… Israel's ambassador said Gaza's militant Islamist rulers had deliberately put people in harm's way.

“The UN's Human Rights Council voted to set up an independent investigation… Some 60 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces on Monday [5/14] in the seventh consecutive week of border protests, largely orchestrated by Hamas, which politically controls the Gaza Strip… It was the deadliest day in Gaza since a 2014 war between Israel and militants there.” BBC.com, May 18th.

Make no mistake, Israel has an absolute right to defend its borders and protect its citizens. But its shifting policies (away from their pledge to the two-state solution into a one-state alternative, building more settlements on the West Bank to prove their recalcitrance), failure to address the dire straits in Gaza and heavily reliance on powerful military force against lightly armed protestors (rocks being the main weapon) have cost Israel any semblance of global support. With little more than U.S. backing, Israel continues to goad the rest of the world with overkill. Blind U.S. support for “anything Israel wants to do” may resonate with Trump’s base, but it will cost the rest of us dearly for decades to come.

While the United States still holds significant sway with the monarchs and most of strongmen (minus Iran, Syria and Yemen) in the Middle East – as evidenced by Qatar’s above-noted financial support for the Kushner family and the Saudi Royal Family’s open support of the Trump family – to the vast ordinary citizenry in the region, the United States is increasingly considered a pariah to the Islamic world, a rogue nation that is deeply anti-Muslim in every way.

Resisting America is a growing value, a means of proving one’s faith. Inevitably, this will cost the United States billions of additional dollars towards increasing intelligence and military efforts, decrease our ability to ferret out extremists targeting American targets worldwide and place Americans and American businesses at increasing risk around the world.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think the region is unstable now – thank you Mr. Trump – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!