The Princeling

 Josh Marshall looks at the extraordinary and out in the open graft of Jared Kushner. As I've said before, the worst legacy of Trumpistan is that we now seem to simply accept a level of corruption by public officials that would have caused Nixon to blush.

The outlines of what Marshall relates are this. Kushner is your archetypical failson - like his father and brothers in law - who made terrible investments of the family's money while his father was in jail. Trump famously put Kushner in charge of all sorts of shit, despite the fact that US intelligence agencies would not issue him a security clearance.

Now that he's out of the White House, Kushner got a $2 billion investment in the hedge fund he's starting from Mohammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Kushner had undermined the US investigation into Jamal Kashoggi's murder and - if reports are to be believed - may have given sensitive US intelligence to Saudi Arabia.

Marshall also says that Kushner may have tipped off MBS to a plot by his relative Mohammad bin Nayef to sideline MBS. bin Nayef was arrested a couple of years ago and hasn't been seen since. 

Marshall also notes that - unusually - Saudi Arabia has refused to boost oil production to compensate for the effective reduction in Russian oil. This benefits Saudi Arabia a little bit in higher oil prices, but it really has the effect of screwing up Biden and Democrats' hopes for the midterms.

Kushner has no business getting a $2B investment. It's absurd and corrupt. And what's more, it's a stark example of the new sides in the 21st century cold war. We have corrupt patrimonial kleptocracies on the one hand - Russia, Saudi Arabia, several Gulf States - and their enablers in the West - Trump, Le Pen, Boris Johnson/Nigel Farage - against a general sense of global order.

Three countries that hold the balance of power in this new cold war are China, India and Iran. China wants a stable international order. Russia undermines that, but China is also basically becoming one of those patrimonial states. India seems to be largely retreating into ethnic nationalism under Modhri and could also collapse into patrimonial corruption. Iran is also corrupt as hell, but their system isn't conducive to patrimonialism, at least.

Iran is... terrible in so many ways. But increasingly it's better than Saudi Arabia. Right now, the US and Iran are negotiating America's return to the JCPOA (nuclear deal). The sticking point is our labelling the Revolutionary Guard a state sponsor of terror. We really need to get that deal done so we can get Iranian oil and natural gas to market.

We also need to start planning for a post-Khamenei Iran. He's 83 years old and in poor health. When he dies, Iran could go in a different direction, only if it sees hope of a better relationship with Europe and America. 

Fundamentally, we need to do two things: prosecute Jared Kushner for the brazen corruption and end our reflexive alliance with Riyadh. It's not 1979 or 2003 anymore. Saudi Arabia are part of the problem, not the solution.