Judd Legum Mar 25
President Trump met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House on November 18, 2025.
“I’m not going to start a war,” President Trump pledged during his November 2024 victory speech. “I’m going to stop wars.”
Today, the United States has been at war with Iran for almost a month, with no clear objectives and no end in sight. Why is Trump, who promised to avoid foreign entanglements, allowing it to drag on?
On Tuesday, the New York Times published a bombshell report. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has been aggressively lobbying Trump not to end the fighting:
Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East, according to people briefed by American officials on the conversations.
In a series of conversations over the last week, Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government, the people familiar with the conversations said.
Oddly, the New York Times story does not mention that Trump’s chief negotiator, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, is being paid tens of millions annually by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is controlled by MBS.
The PIF invested $2 billion in Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners. According to an investigation by the Democratic staff of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Oversight Committee released on March 19, “since 2021, Mr. Kushner has collected more than $110 million from the government of Saudi Arabia for investment management services that have reaped little to no return.”
Meanwhile, as Kushner purportedly represents the United States in negotiations with Iran, his private equity firm is seeking to raise an additional $5 billion from foreign sources. According to reports, “Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.”
Trump said that Kushner was one of a handful of top officials who convinced him to start the war. This was consistent with MBS’s petition. According to the Washington Post, in a series of calls in February, MBS privately lobbied Trump to attack Iran. (Now, Iran is refusing to meet with Kushner, having concluded that he is not participating in discussions in good faith.)
Also unmentioned in Tuesday’s New York Times report is that the Saudi government, through PIF, recently financed a $7 billion development deal in Saudi Arabia with the Trump Organization. Under the January 2026 agreement, Dar Global, a developer with close ties to the Saudi government, will build a “Trump-branded hotel and golf course,” along with “500 mansions, priced between $6.7 million and $24 million.” The project is part of Diriyah, a $63 billion development funded entirely by PIF.
When Trump visited Saudi Arabia in May 2025, MBS took him on a tour of Diriyah and showed him a model of the development. According to Jerry Inzerillo, who heads the Diriyah Company, a PIF subsidiary, Trump was “amazed“ with the quality and scale of the project.
Not only does MBS want Trump to continue the war, according to the New York Times report, but he has “pressed for attacks against Iran’s energy infrastructure” and “argued that the United States should consider putting troops in Iran.”
In recent days, Trump has threatened to attack Iranian power plants and moved thousands of troops to the region, heightening “the possibility that American servicemembers will go into Iran.”
The information landscape in the United States is busted. Billionaires are using the powerful social media platforms and media outlets they control to curry favor with Trump.
Google paid Trump $25 million to settle a bogus lawsuit.
Jeff Bezos purged Trump critics from the Washington Post opinion page.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg canceled fact-checking on Facebook.
A pro-Trump billionaire bought CBS News — and is now buying CNN.
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