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Jordan’s Perennial Quest for Survival

by Hilal Khashan - July 22, 2021

U.S. officials described the Defense Cooperation Agreement signed between the United States and
Jordan earlier this year as a reflection of Jordan’s strategic importance to the Middle East. The deal
calls for building a vast U.S. military base in the country to accommodate the relocation of military
assets from Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey. Jordanian officials say that the agreement is the culmination
of decades of cooperation between the two countries and a means of bringing more stability to the
region. Jordan has long been concerned about its weak strategic position compared to neighboring
Israel and the possibility of another wave of Palestinian refugees coming across its border. But King
Abdullah II seems to be ignoring the reality that a U.S. military presence in Jordan won’t solve the
country’s myriad problems.

A Turbulent Beginning

The British established the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921 after detaching it from Palestine. The
Hashemites, descendants of the Umayyads, who ruled the first Muslim caliphate from Damascus
between 661 and 750, wanted to resurrect the caliphate. The British goal was to prevent Prince
Abdullah, the eldest son of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the king of Hejaz, from seizing Damascus and
claiming it as the seat of his Arab kingdom. The prince’s capture of Damascus would have violated
the terms of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which promised French control over Syria and
Lebanon.

In 1923, the British established the Arab Legion to maintain law and order and patrol the border with
Syria to prevent the tribes from intruding into the French-administered zone. Britain granted
Transjordan independence in 1946 with the signing of the Treaty of Alliance, a deal that echoes the
recent Defense Cooperation Agreement with the U.S. In 1949, King Abdullah I renamed the country
the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after annexing the West Bank. In 1956, King Hussein expelled
British army officers from the country and Arabized Jordan’s military to appease the pan-Arab
Palestinian majority.

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Love-Hate Relationship With Israel

Throughout its history, Jordan has had a turbulent relationship with Israel. King Abdullah I initiated
direct but covert contacts with Palestine’s Zionist movement leaders in the mid-1930s. In 1948, the
Arab Legion went to war with Israel to seize a part of Palestine that Abdullah had agreed would join
Transjordan during a meeting in Amman with Golda Meir, then head of the Political Department of
the Jewish Agency. King Hussein, who took the throne in 1953 after Abdullah was assassinated in
1951, had little contact with Israeli leaders until 1963 when Israeli intelligence launched Operation
Lift.

But Hussein and the Israeli leadership failed to make peace. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin

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rejected outright the principle of Palestinian statehood and proposed that Jordan become the
Palestinian substitute homeland. In 1997, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the
assassination of Khaled Mishaal, the head of Hamas’ Politburo, in Amman. Hussein then threatened
to abrogate the Wadi Araba peace accord, compelling U.S. President Bill Clinton to intervene and
insist that Netanyahu provide an antidote that saved Mishaal’s life. But despite Hussein’s tense
relationship with Begin and Netanyahu, the two countries have cooperated on some key points.
Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency warned Hussein several times about threats to his life by
operatives acting on behalf of Egyptian intelligence. And on the eve of the 1973 October War,
Hussein informed then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that Egypt and Syria were planning a
simultaneous attack on Israeli troops in Sinai and the Golan Heights.

Today, relations between Israel and Jordan are still rocky. King Abdullah II rejected the Abraham
Accords, a Middle East peace plan proposed by the Trump administration, seeing it as an existential
threat to Jordan’s survival as a Hashemite kingdom. He believed the plan would undercut Jordan’s
custodianship over Jerusalem’s holy shrines and unleash a new wave of Palestinian refugees that
would completely alter Jordan’s precarious demography. His resistance to the deal led to his
isolation during the Trump presidency. Joe Biden’s election as president gave Abdullah hope that
Jordan’s isolation could be reversed. Abdullah doesn’t trust the ability of the new government of
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to resolve the Palestinian question and doesn’t believe it will
last.

Royal Family Feud

Chief among Jordan’s current challenges is the dissension within the royal family itself. Last April,
the government said it uncovered a plot led by King Abdullah II’s half-brother Prince Hamzah.
Authorities revealed few details about the conspiracy, saying only that it amounted to sedition, a
punishable crime according to Islamic theology. The plot also allegedly involved another obscure
royal family member, a former Cabinet minister and a dozen tribal affiliates. Only the royal family
member and Cabinet minister were tried in court, while Hamzah and the tribal accomplices were
spared.

Arab media outlets outside Jordan linked the purported conspiracy to Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammad bin Salman, who allegedly sought to topple Abdullah and install Hamzah as king of
Jordan. It’s believed that the crown prince favored Hamzah because, unlike Abdullah, Hamzah
would have been open to signing the Abraham Accords, which would have set the stage for Riyadh
to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Such a treaty was important because the success of Saudi

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Arabia’s Neom megaproject near the Jordanian border relies on Israeli cooperation – which would
require normalization of relations between the Saudis and Israelis.

The incident points to an unprecedented struggle between the royal Hashemites and the
Transjordanian Bedouins, who are the backbone of support for the monarchy. Jordan’s deep-seated
economic crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, created a schism between the royal
family and a segment of the Transjordanian Bedouins. The latter felt that the government did not
redress their economic grievances, and Prince Hamzah presented himself as a defender of their lost
privileges. Abdullah believes he is losing their support, without which the monarchy would crumble.

Elusive Alliances and Hollow Reforms

Arab rulers tend not to take political reform seriously, and King Abdullah II is no exception. He is
aware that the Biden administration wants him to launch comprehensive political reforms. Last
month, he set up a royal committee to look into political, bureaucratic and economic changes. In
presenting the committee, the king bragged about what he called a continuous reform process that
began at the time of Jordan’s founding a century ago. Judging by what previous committees have
achieved during Abdullah’s 22-year rule, there is little hope that the new committee will make any
progress.

The plan to permanently deploy a significant contingent of U.S. troops to control Jordan’s borders
with Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia seems to have assured Abdullah that his regime is secure. Biden’s
welcoming of Abdullah and his young crown prince at the White House has given the king the
impression that the U.S. is committed to including his son in a far-reaching and lasting strategic
partnership.

But Biden’s foreign policy focus is not on the Middle East. His administration hasn’t defined how it
will partner with Jordan beyond sending troops and storing military hardware. It’s interested in a
limited set of goals in the region, including giving Israel security assurances by, for example,
insulating Jordan from Iran’s sphere of influence. The United States’ redeployment to Jordan is part
of this agenda. The king sees the Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington as a way of
securing his regime and the crown prince’s future. But a large and conspicuous U.S. military
presence will only encourage Jordan’s fledgling civil society to assert its presence in the country’s
politics.

Author: Hilal Khashan

Read more from this author on geopoliticalfutures.com

Jordan’s Perennial Quest for Survival

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