Trump Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner Dominate U.S. Foreign Policy Making
April 11, 2026—As the world remains on pins and needles, awaiting the outcome of peace talks mediated by Pakistan in a US-Israel-Iran war that has lasted nearly a month and a half, observers are beginning to question why diplomacy failed and who is responsible.
One of the most apparent things is that U.S. diplomacy is largely outsourced to two billionaires serving as special envoys without government pay: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Both are billionaires with interests that extend beyond U.S. priorities.
Witkoff, President Trump’s assistant and special envoy for peace missions, receives no government salary. Kushner does not even have an official title other than the president’s son-in-law and unofficial adviser. He calls himself a volunteer.
“I have not joined the administration, so I’m still just a volunteer, like the other businessmen who volunteer to help the government when asked. The level of engagement has definitely been a lot more than I anticipated. It really started with Gaza. I was helping – you know – Steve Witkoff who is really an amazing human being…. I spent a lot of time helping Steve, just quietly.”
Nevertheless, the two volunteers are heading up talks with Iran, Israel, and Gulf states, deeply involved in Israel-Palestine issues, and lead U.S. negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. It’s a significant portfolio for two unpaid volunteers. Only recently has Vice President JD Vance stepped into the U.S.-Iran talks.
Problems With ‘Volunteer’ Diplomacy
The problem with the volunteer service is twofold. It creates:
- Absence of professional diplomacy in the interest of the country.
- The potential for corruption and conflict of interest.
Absence of Traditional Diplomacy
Typical diplomacy involves inter-agency coordination among the State Department, National Security Council, the intelligence community, and the president. It includes information relayed by career Foreign Service officers, trade and legal advisers, and input from foreign policy committees in Congress.
What’s remarkable is role of traditional diplomacy has largely been gutted. Only 81 of the 196 ambassador positions have been filled and confirmed, according to the American Foreign Service Association.
The diplomatic corps is especially lacking when it comes to the Middle East. Ambassador roles to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates are vacant. That leaves a gap in coverage that private envoys fill.
“It is easy to tell ourselves this no longer matters,” writes Daniel Benaim in the Financial Times. “In a region dominated by royal courts and a U.S. administration where a few envoys rule the roost, the assumption is that the real business happens elsewhere.”
Benaim is a former State Department diplomat for the Gulf region. In his opinion piece for the FT, he argues that professional diplomats fulfill a needed role in corresponding clear communication and heading off misunderstandings. He suggests that career diplomats are vital.
“They fill the space between compressed high-level calls and the messier realities on the ground. They warn Washington officials before they step on diplomatic landmines and local partners before they make a bad situation worse.”
Deficient U.S. Diplomacy
The U.S. conflict with Iran demonstrates, among other things, a failure in diplomacy.
Notwithstanding the relative skill of the U.S. military in “Operation Epic Fury,” the conflict itself has exposed the deficiency of U.S. diplomacy.
Through a series of blunders, misperceptions, and mistakes, President Trump has been caught off-guard and appears reeling from one explanation to another regarding his goals. For example, Trump reportedly thought the conflict would be short-lived and without substantial economic consequence. In March, CNN reported that, “Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout if Iran were to respond to US-Israeli strikes by closing the strait.”
That came despite knowledge within the U.S. government the closure of the narrow passway was a strong possibility.
In her testimonies to Congress in March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told legislators that the U.S. intelligence community has long assessed that Iran was likely to use its ability to control the Strait of Hormuz to retaliate if attacked. Notably, Gabbard sidestepped questions about whether she briefed Trump on that assessment.
Meanwhile, Witkoff as mistakenly referred to the significant passway as the “Gulf of Hormuz,” rather than the Strait of Hormuz, perhaps shedding light on Trump’s claims
Shadow Diplomacy Sidelines State Department
During Trump’s first term in office, Kushner acted as a senior advisor to his father-in-law, the president. Kushner played a lead role in the development of the Abraham Accords. He also held extensive meetings for foreign leaders, outside the diplomatic loop and in some cases knowledge of the State Department or the embassies of the countries he visited.
Kushner and Steve Bannon had sidelined then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who served from 2017 to 2018, in dealings with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Tillerson was caught off guard when the two countries severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, a key U.S. ally.
“It makes me angry,” Tillerson told congressional staffers in 2019. “Because I didn’t have a say. The State Department’s views were never expressed.”
For Tillerson and his staff at the State Department, it was challenging to navigate around the undefined roles of Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
“It’s unusual. I don’t recall it ever being the case before, not that there’s anything wrong with it. But there was not a real clear understanding of the role, responsibilities, authorities, and whatnot, which made it challenging for everyone, I think, in terms of how to deal with any activities that might be undertaken by others that were not defined within the national security process itself.”
Today, one wonders if Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing the same type of circumstances, bogged down in official capacity while volunteer envoys conduct the heavy lifting of influencing U.S. foreign policy.
Rubio’s Extended Roles
In addition to heading up the State Department, Rubio is concurrently serving as the acting national security advisor since April 2025. Until February 5, Rubio was also the acting head of the National Archives and Records Administration. He attended the G7 foreign ministers meeting in France this Spring but missed the first day of talks.
This week, he attended meetings at the White House, including with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and held meetings at State with Uzbek politician Saida Mirziyoyeva. But as the United States holds one of the most consequential foreign policy meetings in Islamabad, Rubio is not present. Instead of taking part in talks with Iran’s foreign leaders, Rubio is back home managing immigration-related decisions. Today, he announced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested three Iranian nationals with ties to the Iranian regime.
On the other side of the world, Witkoff and Kushner took part in U.S.-Iran talks with Iran. Earlier in April, Vice President JD Vance stepped into the diplomatic fray—apparently taking the reins in the talks.
Vested Interest Diplomacy
Meanwhile, Witkoff and Kushner continued to play lead roles. What’s concerning is that unlike officially appointed diplomats, neither Witkoff nor Kushner faced confirmation hearings in Congress. In 2018, Trump granted Kushner a permanent top-secret security clearance despite recommendations against it from national security officials.
Witkoff is a multibillionaire with a net worth of $2.3 billion, according to Forbes Magazine as of April 2026. In 1997, he founded the Witkoff Group, a private family real estate firm. The Witkoff Group manages a multi-billion dollar portfolio of global luxury hotels, residential, and commercial properties. It raises funds from global investors, including Qatari entities and Apollo Global Management, for projects spanning New York, London, and Miami.
Since serving as a volunteer envoy to the White House, Witkoff’s wealth grew by 15 percent, largely due to his stake in the crypto firm World Liberty Financial, which he and his sons co-founded with the Trump family.
Kushner, meanwhile, has recently made it to the billionaire club. His fortune grew through his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, founded in 2021 with billions of dollars in investment from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, such as the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), and Abu Dhabi, UAE-based private entities. But the end of 2024, the private equity fund managed $4.8 billion.
Lawmakers and ethics watchdogs are raising questions, not only about conflicts-of-interest but also national security concerns. House Democrats on the Oversight Committee, for example, are ringing alarm bells.
“Despite these obvious potential conflicts of interest, President Trump has given Mr. Kushner unprecedented authority to lead foreign policy negotiations. Mr. Kushner has done this while avoiding both transparency requirements and the security clearance vetting process to evaluate, prevent, or disclose the full magnitude of these conflicts.”
House Democrats on the Oversight Committee wrote to Affinity on March 19, asking for detailed information about investments and communications, particularly regarding projects in Gaza, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Albania, or Serbia. They noted in their letter, that the firm could be working on projects that could “benefit from any U.S. government approval, license, authorization, waiver, sanction determination, diplomatic support, security arrangement, financing support, non-objection, or other official action”
During Trump’s first term, Kushner came under scrutiny for co-founding Cadre, a US-based real estate tech platform, with substantial foreign funding. Today, he’s flying under the radar as he flies around the world conducting U.S. diplomacy as a volunteer.
“So long as Kushner fails to file a public financial disclosure and divest from any conflicting assets, the public cannot trust that he is working in their best interest,” said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit has also raised concerns about Kushner’s role in the Trump administration.
