JEREMY LOFFREDO, [email protected], @loffredojeremy
Loffredo just wrote the piece “President Jared Kushner.” He has reported for Drop Site News, including from Lebanon, which is currently under attack from Israel, with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich calling on Israel to annex southern Lebanon.
Loffredo writes in his recent piece: “On March 9th, 2026, Donald Trump told reporters that his decision to strike Iran was informed by Jared Kushner. Kushner had warned the president that Iran was about to attack the United States. The Pentagon briefed congressional staff the exact opposite. Trump’s own appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center subsequently resigned, writing in his resignation letter: ‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel.’ …
“So who exactly is Jared Kushner, and how did a man with no diplomatic experience, no foreign policy background, and no electoral mandate end up at the center of one of the most consequential military decisions in recent American history?
“When Donald Trump appointed his son-in-law as a senior White House advisor in 2017, Kushner was handed control over Middle East policy with no diplomatic experience and no relevant background. Within months, he had effectively set up what Rex Tillerson, Trump’s own Secretary of State, would later describe in congressional testimony as a ‘shadow foreign policy operation.’ Kushner was holding private meetings with foreign heads of state, building relationships with Gulf monarchs, and making commitments that the official U.S. government did not know about until after the fact. Tillerson said he raised the issue with Kushner directly and that ‘not much changed.’
“‘It makes me angry,’ Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. ‘I didn’t have a say. The State Department’s views were never expressed.’”