March 15 2026, 08:15 
As the Middle East spirals toward an ever-expanding war initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump and his spokespeople have flung out many justifications for engaging in the conflict as if they were large batches of McDonald’s secret sauce against a wall to see how much would stick and permanently stain.
By now, they have claimed that the reasons we attacked Iran were because we wanted to protect our troops in the area as Israel was preparing for war, or that there was an “imminent threat” to the U.S. by Iran, or that Iran was just weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon, or that we want to knock out Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, or that we want to make Iran safe and free for the Iranian people, or that we want to conduct regime change, or that we don’t want to conduct regime change, or that we want to see if Iran has a partridge in a pear tree…
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So far it seems that the gooey secret sauce has not stuck, as the majority of U.S. residents (56%) disapprove of Trump’s war in Iran, as opposed to 44% in support, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
So, according to political pundits, when investigating the underlying motives of many politicians, we should “follow the money.” And among all of our presidents, this has never been as true as when looking into the actions of our current grifter-in-chief, President Donald John Trump, who has always placed personal power over political party and financial gain over country.
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Our nation’s founders, concerned that elected officials could profit from leadership positions, wrote a clause in the Constitution that prohibits the nation’s leaders from accepting gifts, titles, and funds from foreign governments.
According to recent estimates, the Trump family and its partners have made hundreds of millions of dollars in trading fees since the president’s meme coin launched. Four months into his second term, Trump and his family are rapidly finding new ways to potentially profit off the presidency.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
“It’s, frankly, ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit.”
If foreign governments or wealthy individuals want to curry favors with the president, there are four main avenues for them to do so: cryptocurrency, new real estate deals, Trump Media (which runs the president’s social media app so-called Truth Social), or direct payments at social clubs, hotels, and golf courses run by the Trump family.
In addition to the president’s meme coin, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., alongside Zach Witkoff, the son of Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witcoff, are leading the Trump family’s crypto firm known as World Liberty Financial.
Officials from, for example, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and the People’s Republic of China collectively spent over $750,000 at the Trump International Hotel during the first term of his presidency, according to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
“These documents sharply call into question the extent to which President Trump was guided by his personal financial interest while in office rather than the best interests of the American people,” said committee chair Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
By failing to divest his vast business holdings worldwide, Donald Trump not only faces valid charges of conflicts of interest, but more importantly, he possibly violated the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Trump’s grifting was evidenced by his attempt to pressure the British to sponsor its national golf tournament at his Scottish golf course and resort, by attempting to hold a G7 conference at his Mar-A-Lago resort, by giving massive tax cuts to himself and his wealthy friends, by pushing for severe relaxation of environmental quality and fair trading standards to benefit corporations and industry at the peril of our climate and health, by engaging in nepotism in hiring family members, by his alleged “mishandling” of campaign and inaugural funding, and by hiding this by never exposing his tax forms.
A mere four days prior to Trump’s second inauguration, emissaries of Tahnoon agreed to purchase 49% of World Liberty Financial at half a billion dollars. World Liberty Financial is a cryptocurrency company co-owned by the Trump family.
As the case with other “nationalist” leaders, Trump deployed his adult children and son-in-law as close trusted political operatives, who meet with visiting diplomats and traveled to foreign capitals to negotiate political and business deals.
Just one week before Trump’s proposed Middle East trip in June 2025, asked by a reporter at a White House press briefing whether the President was gaining financially through foreign governments, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blurted out that “It’s, frankly, ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit.”
I suppose Leavitt was attempting to sell Trump bridges to those assembled in the room.
While Donald Trump has always seen his campaigning for and attaining the presidency as a grand marking scheme to enrich himself and his family financially, why would anyone not consider his main objective in his foreign aggressive adventures, including his attacks on Iran, to be anything other than financial enhancement as well?
United Arab Emirates (UAE)
Members of the United Arab Emirates’s royal family invested $500 million in Donald Trump’s family cryptocurrency company one day after Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. It seems no mere coincidence that the administration announced its permission for the UAE to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s powerful AI chips, even though some technology experts feared the UAE could ultimately share these chips with the Chinese.
During the previous administration, President Biden withheld the exporting of AI chips to the UAE because of its close relationship with China.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — also known as the “spy sheikh” — a powerful official in the UAE government and brother of the nation’s president, backed the deal with Trump’s family. Tahnoon serves as both national security adviser and chair of the Emirates’ $1.5 trillion wealth fund.
A mere four days prior to Trump’s second inauguration, emissaries of Tahnoon agreed to purchase 49% of World Liberty Financial at half a billion dollars. World Liberty Financial is a cryptocurrency company co-owned by the Trump family.
Steve Witkoff is the other co-founder of the WLF crypto firm who retains an 8-figure stake in the company. The UAE initially paid $250 million, $187 million was directed to Trump family entities and $31 million to the Witkoff family. MGX, a company controlled by Tahnoon, purchased $2 billion of crypto tokens from WLF in May 2025.
The World Street Journal reported that Tahnoon negotiated the transaction with the Trump family and entities related to Steve Witcoff, co-founder of World Liberty Financial and Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, in addition to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
“What people call ‘conflicts of interests’, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.”
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner
President Trump met with Tahnoon several times during his second term. Last March, the president hosted a White House dinner for Tahnoon and the Emirati delegation. On his Trump Social website, Trump wrote that the dinner “demonstrated the long-standing ties and bonds of friendship between our countries.”
In the past, presidents have traditionally turned over all their business holding to a blind trust for their length of stay in the Oval Office. In Trump’s case, however, he supposedly passed control to his eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. It seems rather impossible to believe, however, that Donald Sr. is unaware and does not have his hand in the day-to-day operations, especially when they involve large monetary transactions.
President Donald Trump’s business ventures also currently involve his social media company, Truth Social, plus streaming platforms, nuclear fusion, financial services, sales of his brand to adorn building structures, and crypto.
His crypto venture clearly violates the U.S. Constitution’s Federal Emoluments Clause.
Following reports that the UAE purchased a large stake in Trump’s crypto company, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, posted that, “Congress needs to grow a spine and put a stop to Trump’s crypto corruption,” she wrote. “This is corruption, plain and simple. The Trump administration must reverse its decision to sell sensitive AI chips to the United Arab Emirates.”
Saudi Arabia
Iran has long been a threat and the major rival to the nation of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Crown Prince and close ally and friend to Donald Trump, Mohammed bin Salman, has become increasingly disturbed by Iran’s growing military capacities. He reportedly contacted President Trump urging him to attack Iran.
Even following U.S. intelligence reports that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, in June 2025, Trump publicly proclaimed that he ordered limited strikes that “completely obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability.”
Trump has conducted business with Saudi Arabia at least since the 1990s when he sold the NYC Plaza Hotel to a Saudi prince and a set of condos to the Saudi government in 2001.
The Crown Prince has further increased his influence over Trump following the Saudi government’s investment of literally billions of dollars in ventures that substantially increased the fortunes of Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The largest investor in Kushner’s private equity fund, Affinity Partners, is the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), which financed $2 billion in Affinity Partners in 2021 alone. PIF gives Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million, annually, which by now seems like small change to Kushner. The Senate Finance Committee, however, estimates that the Saudi’s will pay Kushner $137 million by August of this year.
Trump sent Kushner as his top negotiator with Iranian officials. Kushner and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff participated in a mediation session with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva just prior to the U.S. and Israeli bombing of Tehran, Iran’s capital city.
While Kushner, like Trump before him, denied any conflict-of-interest charges in accepting large sums of money from foreign governments while serving as a foreign policy official to the U.S. government, in a bizarre twist of “reasoning,” Kushner argued in an October 2025 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes that financial conflicts actually rendered him and Steve Witcoff more effective.
“What people call ‘conflicts of interests’,” claimed Kushner, “Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.”
U.S. and Israeli bombers attacked Iranian targets only weeks after the Arabian Public Investment Fund invested $7 billion in a development agreement between the Saudi Arabian government and the Trump Organization. According to the deal, Dar Global, a building contractor with close links to the Saudi government, intends to build a “Trump-branded hotel and golf course” plus “500 mansions, priced between $6.7 million and $24 million.”
Regarding Qatar, the president’s meetings with members of that government came just days after saying he would accept a major gift from the country, a new luxury Boeing 747 jet worth $400 million to replace Air Force One, which Trump intends to take for his presidential library after leaving office. The aircraft is currently undergoing as much as a $1 billion update at taxpayer expense.
Israel
The Pro-Israel interest group, American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) has spent more than $230 million to benefit Donald Trump since 2020.
Israeli-American physician, businesswoman, philanthropist, conservative political donor, and wife of Sheldon Adelson before his death, Miriam Adelson – estimated as the 49th richest person in the world — has been a mega-donor of Donald Trump. Adelson’s Preserve America PAC has far outspent any other donor, contributing over $215 million into U.S. presidential elections to help Trump.
Pro-Israel lobbying groups have also donated heavily to Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and others in Trump’s administration. In addition, several members of the U.S. legislative branch, Republican and Democrat, have been bankrolled by pro-Israel lobbyists.
AIPAC alone spent tens of millions of dollars to assure that its preferred pro-Israel candidates in 2024 got elected to Congress.
So, when we actually follow the money, and knowing how our current president operates, while all the other supposed justifications for the U.S. entering the war against Iran have slid instantly off the wall, the only one that has stuck permanently while hardening into an integral part of the wall has been Trump’s financial gain.
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