Witkoff and Kushner present terms they know Iran can’t accept, then Trump escalates and points to Iranian intransigence.
It’s diabolical.
Iranian and non-Iranian parties reportedly came to view Witkoff and Kushner as having deliberately misled, not merely incompetent. A Gulf diplomat previously complained about Witkoff’s “bogus misrepresentation of himself as a ‘man of peace.'”
The Arms Control Association documented these war clowns.
In background briefings after the Geneva talks, Witkoff characterized the Tehran Research Reactor as “subterfuge” and a weapons threat.
That’s a lie.
The TRR is a US-supplied facility, operational since 1967, used to produce medical isotopes. It was converted by Argentina to run on 20% enriched uranium fuel.
Witkoff’s claim that Iran had an “overabundance” of fuel for the reactor was the calculated fabrication of a technical pretext by a negotiator who had already decided America should go to war while falsely claiming it wanted peace.
And that’s why we see headlines today claiming peace and war plans at the same time.
Trump’s team game planning for potential Iran peace talks
Trump tells Iran it has 48 hours to open Hormuz or US will ‘obliterate’ its power plants
Neither will be successful. An endless war plan for profit.
Robert C. Rowland, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Kansas and author of the book “The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy” put it like this.
A lot of the rhetoric is performative cruelty. It’s more about him coming across as dominant than it is about making a case that the war has been good for the U.S. and the region and the West and the world.
The peace track fails because the negotiators are financially incentivized by war. The war track escalates because his peace negotiators tell Trump that Iran doesn’t want it, which is false. Both tracks only produce profit for the billionaires starting war.
Kushner is seeking $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners from governments in the region while simultaneously negotiating on behalf of the US. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund pays Kushner $25 million annually in management fees. The Senate Finance Committee estimates Kushner will receive $137 million in management fees from PIF by August 2026.