They say power is the ability to act without considering the consequences to others. Wouldn’t that promote the idea of skipping traditional negotiating hurdles to form fresh, circumspect,  transactional relationships between powerful, political actors if you’re a “Senior Adviser,” and your handshake belongs to that of Jared C. Kushner’s, navigating the dark nexus of money and power as right-hand man and son-in-law to President Donald J. Trump?

Examining Kushner’s fait accompli approach to Trump’s White House diplomacy reshapes the Iran talks in lots of little, interesting ways, perhaps characterized as top-down, hardline, business-centric, and in the case of “the smartest guy I’ve ever seen in my life,” the modern personification of Trump’s Art of the Deal in stealth wealth, streamlined, slim-fitting style.

Kushner’s way of doing his thing reveals a significant transforming of Iran relations from a foreign policy emphasizing cautious, pleasant, personal, negotiated diplomacy, exemplified with polished excellence by George H.W. Bush in his political life, to one driven by quiet-spoken maximum pressure, rapid-thinking, non-traditional “on the fly” deal-making, and high-risk brinkmanship.

Kushner, alongside U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, roughly 25 years older than he, and easily the more vocal and game of the two, provides the tail wagging the dog an Israeli leash, where Kushner, positioned on behalf of special interests, may be driving U.S. policy rather than vice-versa, where Netanyahu’s ultra-right-wing, populist government could, in theory, be influencing the White House’s agenda to seize Iran’s resources for favorable conditions in the Middle East, that’s if you’re on Netanyahu’s side of things, with two envoys thrown a bone.

But Kushner and Witkoff have been thrown a loop, because Iranian officials aren’t so thrilled about renewed negotiations even as the envoys set foot in Pakistan for the meeting of minds and cold hearts via a ceasefire set to lift Wednesday, like a helium balloon escaping doom.

The U.S. played the joker card from a stripper deck after the seizure of an Iranian-flagged........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)