Kushner, Witkoff Accused of ‘Total Malpractice’ in Iran Talks

By Sandra Rhodes (/journals/sandra-rhodes)

U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have been accused of “total malpractice” regarding their handling of talks with Iran.

A former White House official accused the pair, stating they did not have have technical advisers with them during the early talks.

The situation came to light in a story by The New Yorker’s  Dexter Filkins. He described Kushner, 45, and Witkoff, 69, seemed to be out of their depth.

According to the report, the two negotiated with Iran in the morning and would then turn their attention to Russia and its invasion of Ukraine in the afternoons

The report said the two did not bring in technical advisors to help them on the practical implications of Iran’s concessions during the February meetings.

They did have a Department of Energy expert assigned to Witkoff, the outlet reported.

The expert, however, wasn’t in the room when Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, offered concessions that Kushner and Witkoff couldn’t evaluate, The New Yorker reported.

“The Iranians come to you with a proposal. What does it actually mean? How much does it actually set them back — two months or two years? What are the work-arounds? For them not to have technical advisers there is just total malpractice,” the unnamed official said.

The pair afterward made statements during a news conference.

“At the press conference, the American negotiators made baffling statements. Witkoff accused the Iranians of using the Tehran Research Reactor, a facility that produces medical isotopes, to illegally enrich and stockpile uranium—even though repeated I.A.E.A. inspections had found no evidence of military use.”

“You can tell by what Kushner and Witkoff are saying that they don’t understand a lot of the technical issues,” Kelsey Davenport, a nonproliferation expert at the Arms Control Association, in Washington, D.C., told me. A friend of Kushner’s was blunter: “He’s a lovely guy, but he is way the f*ck out of his depth.”

The report also revealed Kushner was “raising another five billion dollars” for his investment firm, Affinity Partners, during the Iran talks.