Kushner and bin Zayed's Plot to Remake the Middle East.
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One of the best sellers on Amazon in multiple categories right now is a book called Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed's Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East. Written by national security journalist Matthew Cole, the book details what might be the most audacious, unconstitutional shadow foreign policy operation in modern American history. Cole exposes a multi-billion-dollar backchannel that bypassed Congress, the State Department, and U.S. law. By combining the high-stakes financial corruption of a corporate heist with the cyber-espionage of a Cold War thriller, the book presents a chilling look at how private ambitions and foreign capital allegedly hijacked American diplomacy.
The Substance of the Allegations
The Shared Geopolitical Objectives: Cole explains that at the start of the first Trump administration, UAE's Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) aligned with Jared Kushner on a sweeping plan to entirely "remake the map" of the Middle East. Their aligned goals included aggressively thwarting Iranian influence, systematically undoing the remaining civic legacy of the Arab Spring, and orchestrating a regional Israeli-settlement deal that fundamentally sidelined the Palestinians.
The Transactional Nature of the Alliance: In exchange for American policy alignment, the Gulf autocrats provided what Cole describes as an off-the-books foreign policy fund. For MBS specifically, the alliance was a tool to secure U.S. backing to leapfrog traditional lines of succession and cement his position as Crown Prince and future king.
The Mechanics of the Secret Accounts: Cole details the setup of a multibillion-dollar "slush fund" operating without statutory authority, diplomatic oversight, or U.S. Senate vetting. According to his reporting, this manifested in two specific accounts: the "Alpha" account at First Abu Dhabi Bank (which reportedly received an initial $750 million from Saudi and UAE entities) and the "Beta" account linked to Israel’s central bank, which allegedly accumulated up to $1 billion by 2018.
Covert Financing and Regional Fallout: Cole emphasized that these unconstitutional accounts funded destabilizing regional maneuvers. This included bypassing official channels to support armed warlords in the Libyan civil war, backing the abrupt 2017 diplomatic blockade of Qatar, and accelerating conditions that ultimately contributed to the current devastation in Gaza and escalating U.S.-Israeli tensions with Iran.
The Cyber Espionage Discovery: Interview discussions highlighted the highly unorthodox path of the intelligence leak. Cole clarifies that the primary evidence of these transactions did not come from a traditional corporate or state department whistle-blower, but rather from the Dutch intelligence services (MIVD). The MIVD intercepted screenshots of Kushner’s phone while actively spying on a server used by Russian GRU military hackers who had successfully breached the device.
The Defense and Rigor of Reporting: Addressing the intense pushback from the subjects of the book, Cole noted on air that Kushner's legal team sent an aggressive 13-page warning letter to Simon & Schuster and publicly dismissed the findings as "completely insane" and "categorically false". Cole firmly defended the book's integrity, noting it is the product of a five-year investigation built upon more than 50 anonymous intelligence and diplomatic sources, heavily insulated by exhaustive endnote documentation.