The financial logic behind the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran
TRUMP WITH HIS HAT IN HIS HAND: THE EMPIRE IS CLOSING DOWN + It’s Zionism, darling
Today I am providing my English translation of three short articles.
The first one is an article by Karel Beckman, originally in Dutch and published on DeAndereKrant.nl on Thursday 9th April 2026 and then translated into Italian and published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Friday 17th April 2026.
(All formatting original, footnotes mine).
The financial logic behind the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran
Destroy a country so that it has to borrow billions of Dollars for reconstruction, which you then offer to provide. This is the logic of the bankers behind the wars that the West unleashes around the world, writes the blogger EscapeKey (ESC) [link] in a sharp analysis [link] on his Substack [link]. He focuses in particular on the role of Trump’s negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and the parties with whom they collaborate, such as the Rothschild bankers.
One of the most striking aspects of the Trump administration is the role assigned to two of his loyalists: his friend from the property sector, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. They negotiate far-reaching peace and trade agreements on behalf of the president across the globe. In this, they have Trump’s full backing, as they explained in an interview with the television programme 60 Minutes last October [2025]. The mandate we receive from the president, said Kushner, “is simply — don’t make a bad deal”. Among other things, the pair held a five-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin last December [2025], negotiated a “peace agreement” with Morocco and Algeria, devised the so-called Board of Peace which exercises authority over Gaza, and spoke on 23rd March with “Iranian representatives”, at least according to Trump.
Neither of the two has a diplomatic background, nor do they hold any official government post. Witkoff has, however, been appointed “special envoy”, whilst Kushner does not even hold this title. Many are asking: what exactly is their mission? And on whose behalf are they actually negotiating? The blogger ESC answers these questions in an in-depth analysis on his Substack. Witkoff and Kushner’s aim, he claims, is to create a “system of financial rewards” for parties seeking to profit from the war.
How does it work? First, a war is unleashed, from which the military-industrial complex profits. Once a country has been reduced to rubble, a “peace agreement” is reached, following which the affected country must borrow huge sums of money for reconstruction. This offers “opportunities” to bankers and other entrepreneurs. The bill is paid partly by the population of the impoverished country, but above all by taxpayers in Western countries, who must cough up the money promised by international bodies such as the EU, the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank. What people like Witkoff and Kushner are engaged in, writes ESC, “is not a peace process, but a profit model”.
For Ukraine, for example, an $800 billion aid package for reconstruction is ready, funded by the EU, the World Bank, the IMF and private entities. The EU also promised in December 2025 a $90 billion “loan” that Ukraine will only have to repay once Russia is willing to pay war reparations – in other words, never.
Entities such as Blackrock, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and a group of companies linked to the Rothschild banks are eager to step in as soon as a “peace agreement” is reached, writes ESC. This explains the growing pressure being exerted by the United States on Zelensky to accept a deal.
Every country that is “helped” in this way, writes ESC, is not only indebted to its creditors but must also abide by the rules imposed upon it. In this way, a country is made dependent on Western governments and financiers.
War profiteers are also gathering around Gaza, writes ESC, and here too this is happening under the pretext of “peace”. Gaza will be governed by a Peace Council under the personal leadership of Donald Trump. Anyone wishing to join this Council must fork out at least $1 billion. This, however, offers “opportunities”. Involved in the reconstruction of Gaza are, for example, companies such as Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management – a major financier of Jeffrey Epstein1 – and the notorious private equity fund (“predatory capitalist”) KKR. According to Marc Rowan, co-founder of Apollo, Gaza represents a property value of $115 billion, “which just needs to be unlocked”. Taxpayers are footing the bill: the US government and other administrations have already allocated $17 billion. “We are talking to property developers from all over the Middle East,” said Kushner, considered one of the architects of the Peace Council.
The same scenario awaits Iran and the Gulf States, writes ESC. Arms and ammunition manufacturers are making a fortune from the devastation caused. The destroyed infrastructure will then have to be rebuilt. The hope of the parties helping to unleash the war is that Iran, which has been excluded from Western payment systems for years, will be reintegrated into the financial system.
It is no coincidence that Trump’s chief negotiators, Kushner and Witkoff, are not diplomats but businessmen, writes the ESC. Both have commercial ties to Trump himself and are also part of other financial networks. Kushner is the founder of Affinity Partners, an investment firm which, by the end of 2025, managed $6.2 billion, 30% more than the previous year. Almost all the capital comes from the Gulf states, with Saudi Arabia as the main financier. Kushner also has links to the Rothschilds, as he himself has hinted in the past. In 2017, Rothschild & Co was commissioned by the Ukrainian government as an advisor for the “restructuring” of the country’s foreign debt. The bank also manages the trading of Ukrainian war bonds. Kushner also has an extensive Jewish network. He has been a member of the Orthodox Jewish Chabad movement since his time as a student at Harvard. His father, Charles Kushner, convicted in 2005 of fifteen serious offences and pardoned by Trump in 2020, is a close friend of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.
Witkoff, for his part, has close financial ties to the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf states. Both the Qatar and Abu Dhabi [UAE (United Arab Emirates)] sovereign wealth funds have invested heavily in the Witkoff Group, a property company now led by [Steve] Witkoff’s son, Alexander. In 2023, Qatar purchased the loss-making Park Lane Hotel in New York for $623 million. Witkoff’s sons are also, alongside the Trump family, co-founders of the cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial. Witkoff also has links to Russian oligarchs, including Len Blavatnik and Viktor Vekselberg, who made their fortunes in the 1990s through privatisations under Yeltsin, subsequently revoked by Putin.
When the 60 Minutes interviewer asked about possible conflicts of interest, Kushner replied: “What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and relationships of trust”.
Witkoff and Kushner are also involved in negotiations between Morocco and Algeria, which are competing for the gas pipelines due to be built from Nigeria to Europe. Unlike Algeria, Morocco has signed the Abraham Accords, the agreements concluded under Trump in 2020 between Israel and the Gulf States for the “normalisation” of relations. Kushner is the main architect of these agreements.
The question is: for how long will Kushner and Witkoff, who are now discussing the war in Iran with Pakistan, still be able to conclude new agreements? “The negotiators are now viewed with suspicion by all sides,” writes the ESC. “The pattern has become too obvious”.
The second article, by Riccardo D’Amico, was published on ComeDonChisciotte.org yesterday, Thursday 21st May 2026. (Italics original, bold emphasis mine).
TRUMP WITH HIS HAT IN HIS HAND: THE EMPIRE IS CLOSING DOWN
“US imperialism has invaded the Chinese territory of Taiwan and has occupied it for nine years.”
(Mao Zedong, Address to the Supreme People’s Court, 8th September 1958).
A few days ago we saw a meek Trump, chained up like a dog in the rain. Paradoxically, for the first time in history, we witnessed a US President aware of the capitulation of his own country and of the entire Western coalition. China has not only established itself as a modern and prosperous state, but has made it clearer than ever that a viable alternative exists, with Xi Jinping demonstrating the existence of a growing and stable multipolar world.
In the debates, the Chinese authorities have promoted a Middle East peace plan, advocating peaceful coexistence between States and confirming their recognition of the Palestinian authorities. The debacle of the West became apparent some time ago, in two main respects: international law and Taiwan.
As for the first point, the Chinese President, even in his meeting with Putin just a few hours ago, clearly emphasised the concept of universal law, taking a stance diametrically opposed to the univocity of the law itself. It is utterly inconceivable to engage in dialogue if the legal authorities, which should be working to ensure compliance with the rules, are entirely subservient to the political bodies of the White House.
The second and final coup de grâce was delivered on the issue of the Taiwan dossier. Beijing has not only reaffirmed a red line, but has comprehensively defined the balance of power. The former British colony is no longer an outpost of democratic imperialism, but rather a matter whose resolution lies in Chinese hands. Despite the differences in context, Taiwan is to China as Ukraine is to Russia. These red lines cannot be crossed by the US; otherwise, as Xi Jinping himself has stated, the risk of conflict is very high. It would be yet another war of attrition for the United States, already defeated – and not just militarily – in Iran.
The US establishment is using Taipei’s fascist pawns, forcing legislators to approve a military programme worth 295 billion Taiwanese dollars for the purchase of antiquated (US) weaponry.
Rather than a defence of the island, this is long-term funding for the Washington DC arms industry. Furthermore, US blackmail extends to major companies specialising in microchips and artificial intelligence, forcing them to relocate to Arizona (the case of TSMC).
Beyond the summit’s formal outcomes, and despite everything, Trump confirms that he is not quite the madman with the blond quiff. Regardless of the façade, the fanciful agreements and the tariffs on China trumpeted complete with tables, the US President has clearly understood the importance of striking trade deals with Beijing. The creation of two bodies – the first dedicated to discussions on rare earths and the resolution of economic disputes (the US-China Investment Committee), and the second (the US-China Investment Committee) tasked with assessing Chinese investments in the US – is proof of this.
At this moment, the Western moral mask is slipping – the one that exports classism in the guise of universal values. The fight against communism and the hunt for the “red enemy” served only to paint the word “democracy” on bomber aircraft. This is also why “Chinese superiority” and the international structure of the BRICS lie primarily in the US’s own decline.
Amidst all this, the European Arms Union has remained anchored to a retreating ally and isolated in its pro-Nazi neoliberalism, while the global market has definitively shifted decision-making and economic activities towards Eastern Europe and Asia.
The third and final article, by Massimo Mazzucco, was published on his website LuogoComune.net yesterday, Thursday 21st May 2026. (All emphasis and footnotes mine).
It’s Zionism, darling
The first thing that strikes one about the evening TV programmes is the almost unanimous attempt by presenters and guests to blame [Israeli Police Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir for what happened to the prisoners on the flotilla [see my previous article].
Indeed, [Italian TV channel] La7 devoted a segment of its news programme to retracing the history of this “supremacist, racist, fascist” – as [Enrico] Mentana2 described him – right from the very beginning of his political career.
But the problem is not Ben-Gvir. The problem is called “Zionism”.
The supremacist, racist and fascist mindset of today’s Zionists originated in the 1920s, with the founding of “revisionist Zionism” by Zeev Jabotinsky.
A Russian Jew born in Odessa, Jabotinsky is considered the spiritual father of the entire historical right wing in Israel – anti-Arab, supremacist and nationalist – whose most famous heirs were Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, and most recently Benjamin Netanyahu.
Revisionist Zionism maintained that dialogue with the Arabs was futile, and that the only way to complete the project of colonising Palestine was through the forced expulsion of its inhabitants.
In his famous ideological manifesto, entitled “The Iron Wall”, Jabotinsky wrote: “There can be no voluntary agreement between us and the Palestinian Arabs. Colonisation can have only one aim, and the Palestinian Arabs will never accept this aim. There is no choice. The Arabs must make way for the Jews in the land of Israel. If it was possible to resettle the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to displace the Arabs of Palestine”.
And so it was. With the ethnic cleansing of ’48 (the Nakba), the Zionist project began to take shape.
Already the founder of the Jewish Legion, in 1931 Jabotinsky had left the Haganah3 because he considered it too weak in dealing with the Arabs, and had founded the Irgun, a terrorist organisation that systematically carried out acts of terrorism against both Palestinian Arabs and the British authorities, whom it regarded as illegal occupiers.
And following the inglorious British withdrawal from Palestine, the Irgun gave rise to the far-right Herut party, which in 1973 merged into Likud, the party currently led by Netanyahu.
There is therefore a continuous ideological thread linking the founder of revisionist Zionism to the latest “supremacist, racist, fascist” minister in Netanyahu’s government. To take issue with Ben-Gvir today merely means postponing indefinitely the moment when the world will finally have to face head-on one of the biggest problems afflicting it today. That problem is called Zionism.
See these translations for more information about the so-called Epstein regime.
The first article explaining the funding model of war and rebuilding is so important to understand, Ismaele. Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you Ismaele for this trio of articles simple and to the Point