President Donald Trump’s son-in-law not only defied the foreign policy consensus but also laid the groundwork for a new one.

Any serious assessment—or judgment—of Jared Kushner should begin not with the controversy his political rivals now seek to place at the center of the discussion, but with the strategic question at the heart of his record: what has he actually accomplished? What, precisely, has he changed in the Middle East, and why has it mattered?

These questions go to the heart of Jared Kushner’s record. He did not simply take part in Middle East diplomacy—he helped change its direction by treating Arab-Israeli normalization not as the end of a process, but as the starting point for a new regional dynamic.

This shift reflected a deeper reading of the region as it was becoming, rather than as many analysts still preferred to describe it. A new Middle East was already emerging: more pragmatic, more transactional, more technologically ambitious, and more attentive to power, opportunity, and national transformation than to the rhetorical comforts of inherited political language. 

Kushner recognized that a younger generation of Arab leadership was increasingly focused on investment, innovation, security cooperation, connectivity, logistics, and economic diversification. In such an environment, diplomacy could no longer be conducted solely through the vocabulary of grievance and procedural delay. It had to be tied to incentives, interests, and outcomes.

This is the real significance of the Abraham Accords. Their importance lies not only in the agreements themselves, but in the strategic philosophy they expressed. They rested on a simple but powerful proposition: peace and prosperity must move together. Security without opportunity remains fragile; opportunity without security remains vulnerable. Kushner grasped that durable regional openings would have to be built not only through official declarations, but through commerce, technology, private initiative, aviation, finance, and human exchange.

This matters because it changed the sequence of regional politics. It demonstrated that Arab states and Israel could deepen relations based on converging interests rather than waiting indefinitely for a perfect political horizon that never seemed to arrive. It introduced a framework in which deterrence, economic integration, and geopolitical realism could reinforce one another. 

It also suggested that the old diplomatic grammar—so often centered on symbolic postures and repetitive formulas—was losing its capacity to create momentum. Kushner did not solve the Middle East; no serious observer would make such a claim. But he did help break a stagnant sequence and replace it with one that proved more dynamic, more realistic, and ultimately more productive than many had expected.

That is why his record deserves to be examined at the level of statecraft rather than reduced to the level of polemics. What makes Kushner such an unusual figure in Washington is not simply that he operated outside the traditional foreign-policy establishment. It is that he was able, despite that fact, to produce a result of lasting strategic consequence. He was willing to challenge an entrenched orthodoxy not for the sake of disruption, but to produce a different outcome. And he delivered one.

This is why the present moment invites reflection. More revealing than the scrutiny itself is the strategic moment in which it has emerged. Kushner is being drawn back into political controversy at precisely the time when the regional order he helped shape has regained central importance. The future of the Abraham Accords, the consolidation of Arab-Israeli alignment, the role of Gulf states, and the larger effort to contain and outmaneuver the Iranian regime have all returned to the center of strategic debate. In that context, the renewed effort to treat Kushner primarily as an object of political attack cannot be understood only as a procedural matter. It also has political and strategic significance.

Washington has always known how to absorb conventional failure more comfortably than unconventional success. Failure that comes wrapped in accepted credentials is often tolerated as unfortunate complexity. Success that emerges from outside the expected channels is more disruptive. It unsettles assumptions, embarrasses orthodoxies, and forces a reconsideration of what the established framework failed to see. Kushner’s record does precisely that.

His contribution was not simply to produce agreements, but to help introduce a different logic of order—one grounded in alignment, incentives, and the recognition that durable stability would have to rest on both security and opportunity.

As a non-American, I have no legitimate place in the internal rivalries of the two parties. But I have long admired the quality of American leadership and supported it under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. If the United States has remained a singular power, it is because, in its finest moments, it has known how to unite responsibility with foresight, rigor with restraint, institutional vigilance with strategic seriousness. It also understands that authentic success should not be dismissed simply because it arose from an unexpected quarter. 

The American Dream—the dream of achievement—has always been renewed by generations of builders and innovators who widened the horizon of the possible. That same spirit is visible today in the generation of American entrepreneurs who helped bring artificial intelligence to the forefront and share its promise with the world. They, too, reflect the deeper compass of the American idea: ambition disciplined by purpose, innovation joined to vision, and success measured not only by wealth, but by contribution.

Jared Kushner should be judged in that larger American spirit: seriously, fairly, and in proportion to what he actually changed. Not because he stands above criticism, but because he altered the regional landscape in ways that continue to shape events. In foreign policy, results matter. And so does the ability to recognize them when they appear.

About the Author: Ahmed Charai

Ahmed Charai is the publisher of The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune and serves on the boards of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

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