At the Arab-Islamic Summit in Doha, Qatar, on Sept. 15, 2025, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif urged “the creation of an Arab Islamic task force to adopt effective measures toward Israeli expansionist designs.”
“We reiterate the OIC’s [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] call to suspend Israel’s membership of the United Nations,” he said, adding that member states should actively consider implementing other appropriate measures against Israel. Pakistan does not officially recognize the State of Israel.
A year later, in September 2026, the Florida-based drone manufacturer Powerus—which counts Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump among its investors— secured a procurement order from Pakistan's Ministry of Defense for unmanned systems. Powerus executives traveled to Rawalpindi to meet with Pakistan's Army Chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir. They subsequently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pakistan's military. A co-founder of Powerus is an IDF veteran, Ziv Marom.
Reuters reported on September 17:
U.S. drone firm Powerus has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Pakistan Army that includes an initial drone-related order, co-founder Brett Velicovich told Reuters.
Velicovich declined to provide details, citing security sensitivities, but said the deal fell within the category of unmanned aerial systems. He also declined to disclose the value of the order, citing confidentiality.
The signing of the MOU and the initial order have not previously been reported.
Powerus, which offers aerial and maritime drones for military and industrial use, is due to merge with a publicly traded company backed by two of U.S. President Donald Trump's sons, called Aureus Greenway Holdings. Both companies have said they expect the merger to complete in early October.
Trump's sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, own a stake in Aureus through an investment fund called American Ventures, according to U.S. regulatory filings. American Ventures is expected to hold a 9.9% beneficial ownership stake in the combined company after the merger, regulatory filings show.
Pakistan's military said a Powerus delegation led by Velicovich met Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir and they discussed defence procurement, production and long-term capacity building. The military statement did not mention the MoU.
Andrew Fox, Powerus' founder and chief executive, said that Pakistan's private defence sector remains "emerging but still not mature," leaving room for U.S. firms to move faster.
The goal would be a joint technology relationship, pairing best-in-breed technology from the U.S. with best-in-breed technology from Pakistan," Velicovich said, adding that Powerus was exploring ways to potentially build technology in Pakistan.
In early 2026, Pakistan signed another Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SC Financial Technologies, an affiliate of the World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the main crypto business of Trump's family. The deal, which involved a visit to Pakistan by co-founder Zach Witkoff (son of Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff), focuses on exploring digital-payment infrastructure and a dollar-linked stablecoin.
WLFI is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform co-founded in 2024 by Trump, his sons, and Witkoff, alongside his son Zach Witkoff. The ecosystem natively operates a dollar-pegged stablecoin called USD1 and features the WLFI governance token.
In late 2024, WLFI partnered with the Tron network and its founder, Justin Sun, following Sun's $75 million investment. Ethics and financial crime experts then raised significant red flags given the underlying network's extensive history with terror-financing designations.
The Jerusalem Post reported on Dec. 12, 2024: "Crypto seizures announced by the Israeli security services since 2021 have frequently singled out Tron’s use by terrorists, including Hamas."
Israeli authorities have actively tracked crypto assets on the Tron blockchain. They have for years frozen Tron wallets they say were used by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah.
Reuters reported that Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF), which is responsible for such seizures, froze 143 Tron wallets between July 2021 and October 2023 that it believed were connected to a "designated terrorist organization" or used for a "severe terror crime."
Financial experts noted that Tron surpassed Bitcoin as a preferred network for these terror groups due to its faster transaction speeds and lower fees.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's support for Hamas remains out in the open. Domestically, Hamas enjoys vast popularity in Pakistan. Major Islamic political parties, such as Jamaat-e-Islami, frequently organize mass anti-Israel rallies. These demonstrations are used to tap into widespread voter sentiment and provide public platforms for Hamas figures. Top leadership from Hamas, including Ismail Haniyeh, has historically engaged directly with Pakistani political circles through recorded public broadcasts and virtual addresses to Pakistani crowds.
Reports indicate that Hamas maintains a functional footprint within Pakistan through special representatives like Naji Zaheer. Zaheer operates openly, attending conferences alongside local professional organizations and state-recognized political fronts.
Western and regional intelligence watchdogs, including reports from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), have repeatedly raised alarms that Hamas operatives are expanding ideological and logistical hubs on Pakistani soil. Pakistan's Foreign Office has even said it does not engage Israel in multilateral forums.
In addition, according to the Global Terrorism Index, Pakistan ranks first globally as the country most impacted by terrorism in 2026 - a crisis born from decades of cultivating terrorist proxies that have now turned inward to consume their creator.
International intelligence reports, security experts, and foreign governments widely conclude that Pakistan's military and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have historically utilized regional terrorist groups as proxies to advance its geopolitical interests. For instance, Pakistan provided historical safe havens and logistical support to the Afghan Taliban during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
Yet, Pakistan's military continues to benefit from US drone deals: The mid-September engagement between Powerus and the Pakistan Army/Ministry of Defense was discussed at the army's general headquarters with Field Marshal Asim Munir. Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) confirmed the meeting on procurement, production, and capacity-building. It has not yet confirmed the MoU.
Powerus is a U.S. firm. Several people around it—such as Ziv Marom (IDF veteran and Kaizen Aerospace founder folded into Powerus), Michael Sinensky, Amy Bove, and Brett Velicovich—sit in or adjacent to Israel Friends / Worldwide Friends Foundation networks that work with Israeli defense, police, and commando units on protective gear, drones, counter-drone, and surveillance kit after the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre against Israelis.
Meanwhile, in April 2026, during a major U.S.–Iran conflict, high-level diplomatic peace negotiations took place in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Vice President JD Vance led the initial, high-profile U.S. delegation to Pakistan alongside Jared Kushner and Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff for face-to-face negotiations. Later in the month, when talks resumed for a second round, Kushner and Witkoff traveled back to Pakistan as the primary envoys while VP Vance remained on standby in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Jared Kushner's firm, Affinity Partners, manages over $6 billion in assets, of which roughly 99% is backed by foreign investors. The vast majority of these funds originate from the Middle East. This includes a $2 billion anchor investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), supplemented by a combined $1.5 billion injection from the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and the Abu Dhabi-based alternative asset manager Lunate Capital.
In addition, Affinity Partners built a 9.87% (near-10%) stake in Phoenix Financial (The Phoenix Holdings), which is recognized as Israel's largest institutional investor and asset manager. In late July 2026, Affinity Partners executed a highly publicized stake sale, offloading roughly a quarter of its position (a 2.5% stake) to global institutional buyers like Fidelity Investments for $343 million. Despite this partial exit to secure a fivefold return on its initial capital, Affinity remains Phoenix Financial’s largest single shareholder.
It appears that Pakistan's lack of formal diplomatic recognition of Israel no longer precludes access to commercial, defense-technology, and intermediary networks. Instead, private corporations, non-governmental foundations, and politically connected U.S. interlocutors serve as the critical connective tissue facilitating these indirect relationships.
In June 2026, Powerus also entered an exclusive Intellectual Property (IP) licensing agreement with India's Paras Defence and Space Technologies. This deal grants Paras Defence the sole rights to locally manufacture and sell the Guardian-1 Interceptor—a high-speed, battery-powered counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) designed to physically track and neutralize hostile one-way attack drones. This makes Powerus a rare defense contractor concurrently arming and protecting both sides of the India-Pakistan rivalry.
Meanwhile, Pakistan remains one of the world’s leading centers of Islamic terrorism. Osama bin Laden lived in a walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, less than a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, before U.S. Navy SEALs killed him on May 2, 2011. The city is a major military garrison area housing thousands of Pakistani troops and multiple army units.
For decades, Pakistan has remained a safe haven for terrorists, given that its military establishment uses some terror groups for its own political purposes. Pakistan historically leverages U.N.-designated terrorist outfits, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its active splinter groups like the Resistance Front (TRF), to execute terrorist operations. Attacks engineered from across the border, such as the Pahalgam massacre in Jammu and Kashmir, deliberately target civilians based on religion.
In a 2017 report titled “Pakistan Army and Terrorism: An Unholy Alliance,” the European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) noted:
The fact that Pakistan still sees terrorist groups and terrorists differently is also one of the major bottlenecks. The army, along with the ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence organization], still distinguishes between ‘bad’ terrorists (those who target Pakistani Security Forces) and ‘good’ terrorists (those who advance its strategic objectives vis-à-vis Afghanistan, India and Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir).
Even after Pakistan’s post-9/11 partnership with the United States, several Islamist groups continue to enjoy close ties with the State and popularity among certain sections of the public.
Western transactions with Pakistan have thus drawn intense scrutiny regarding potential foreign policy conflicts of interest.
Engaging in military or financial projects with states linked to state-sponsored terrorism or hostile foreign policies—such as Pakistan—poses significant geopolitical risks. From a strategic security perspective, capital flows and defense alignments with these nations can inadvertently undermine global counter-terrorism efforts, compromise the security of democratic nations such as the United States and Israel, and weaken the collective stance against transnational Islamic terrorist networks.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media's conservative reporting exposing the radical left and woke media? Support our work so we can keep bringing you the truth.
Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.