The bizarre connection between Iran negotiations and Trump’s crypto firm

In January, Zach Witkoff sat down at a table in Islamabad and signed a deal with Pakistan’s finance minister. Witkoff is the young CEO of Donald Trump’s crypto finance firm, World Liberty Financial, and the arrangement he struck that day would allow WLF’s stablecoin to be used for Pakistan’s cross-border transactions.

It was a hugely consequential moment for World Liberty. Despite Trump’s association and the involvement of his sons, this firm hasn’t exactly lit the blockchain world on fire. The value of the company’s token has plummetted from 31 cents to just 8 cents in recent months. World Liberty could use a deal like this—a government vouching for and endorsing the use of its coin. And the deal was being consummated, standing behind Witkoff was General Asim Munir, the top officer in Pakistan’s army.

The presence of a military leader during this financial meeting was odd. But three months later, Munir is connected to another Witkoff family effort: the ongoing negotiations to settle the war in Iran.

Munir has been a frequent visitor to the Trump White House and is a chief architect of Pakistani efforts to mediate an end to the Iran war. That means he’s working with Witkoff’s father, Steve Witkoff, the billionaire New York City real estate developer who Donald Trump appointed to be his Mideast envoy. The elder Witkoff will join Vice President JD Vance and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner at the negotiating table on Saturday, facing off with Iran’s negotiators in talks being brokered by Pakistan.

The Witkoff connection is not a coincidence. It’s another example of how the Trump crew is mixing business—their personal financial business—with US foreign policy.

Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has ebbed and flowed over recent decades, and under the Biden administration, it was at a low. But Pakistan has mounted a huge effort to cozy up to Trump. The country nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, and the World Liberty Financial deal appears to be part of the overall effort.

Last month, Bloomberg profiled self-described “crypto bro” Bilal Bin Saqib—one of the key architects of both the deal between World Liberty Financial and the Pakistani government and the newly warmed relationship between Islamabad and the Washington.

“Because of crypto, doors have opened,” Saqib told Bloomberg. “New conversations have opened, trust has been built. We have gotten an opportunity to rebrand.” 

Saqib, who is 35, was named an adviser to World Liberty Financial last year, but he left that post to take a series of increasingly high-profile jobs in the Pakistani government working with crypto. His current position is chair of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, the country’s crypto regulator.

Saqib has maintained his close relationship with World Liberty Financial, posting selfies with Zach Witkoff from a Mar-a-Lago get-together a few weeks before the Iran war kicked off.

The agreement that Pakistan signed with World Liberty Financial is non-binding, but it could be massive for the Trump family. The company is a defi platform—decentralized finance. That means it offers users the ability to move money through the blockchain—buying, selling, exchanging, and lending to others via a centralized platform that doesn’t involve a traditional bank. When users purchase the company’s digital tokens—the tool that enables all of the transactions—the Trump family gets a cut of the proceeds.

The Trump family already has earned about $1 billion from their arrangement with World Liberty Financial. The addition of millions of new users from Pakistan would provide World Liberty with more activity on the platform and more stability—and the Trumps with more cash flow as tokens are bought and sold.

It’s not clear if the effort by World Liberty Financial and Saqib to bring Trump’s defi operation into a potentially hugely lucrative relationship with the Pakistani government is the reason for Pakistan’s newly emerged role as Washington’s closest friend in the region, or if it’s the result of the arrangement—or something else entirely. But whatever the case, Trump is mixing his personal financial interests and US national security interests by intertwining his family business with the Pakistani government, while collaborating with Pakistan in this diplomatic initiative. At the negotiating table this weekend, his financial prospects—and those of his envoy’s son—could be difficult to separate from the fate of the Iran war.