Jared Kushner ‘disappointed’ in Biden administration’s failure to expand Abraham Accords

Former senior White House adviser Jared Kushner lamented on Monday the failure of US President Joe Biden's administration to expand agreements between Arab countries and Israel under the Abraham Accords, which Donald Trump brokered in 2020.

At an event in Washington on the second anniversary of the accords, Mr Kushner said: “The biggest disappointment so far is that more countries haven't been brought into it … we had about six active discussions that we had going on, I think that there's a lot more to build on."

The accords normalised relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

“I do hope that the current administration will focus on that and then work to do that,” Mr Kushner, who is also Mr Trump's son-in-law, said.

“Because once the whole Arab-Israeli conflict is over, I think that you will have an era of prosperity and peacefulness in that region that will endure for a very, very long time.”

The Biden administration has repeatedly voiced its intention to expand the number of countries in the accords but no formal agreements have been reached.

Mr Kushner attributed the success of the accords to the Trump team’s ability to inject unconventional thinking into resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

He also rejected the idea of viewing the Middle East through a sectarian Sunni-Shiite lens.

“We created a set of situations where we were putting the different leaders in a prism when we came into the job. Everyone said the Middle East is really about Sunni-Shia divides,” Mr Kushner said.

But he argued that the fundamental divide in the region was between leaders “who want to give their people better lives and give their people opportunity and then leaders who are trying to justify their existence based on some religious perversion or some, you know, scapegoating of somebody else”.

The former White House adviser defended Mr Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran, saying the conventional thinking that disaster would inevitably follow these decisions proved to be incorrect.

“The next morning [after moving embassy], the sun rose, and the same thing happened again with pulling out of the Iran deal, and people said, ‘If you do this, it's going to lead to World War Three, it's going to be disaster’,” he said.

He also said that pulling out of the deal in 2018 blocked funding to Iran that would have otherwise reached its proxies in the region such as Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Abraham Accords — in pictures

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Male 54kg Round 1

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In Full Flight: A Story of Africa and Atonement
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Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi

From: Dara

To: Team@

Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT

Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East

Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.

Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.

I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.

This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.

It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.

Uber on,

Dara

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