Linchpin Jordan: Battlefield of the Middle East or Facilitator of Peace?

A water-poor land stuck between the fertile Levant and the oil-rich Gulf kingdoms but possessing neither economic nor natural wealth of any significance, a mesmerizing desert landscape unrivaled in the world some say and a few historic and holy sites, all this makes The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan a great place for tourists to visit, but a burden to run. My heartfelt sympathies to its ruling dynasty, I know first-hand what it’s like to run a small family business, my own father struggled with one for years as did we all along with him.

Jordan not only needs water aid, it needs economic aid and lots of it, and the US recognized this early on and has since the 70s at least supported first King Hussein and later his son and heir King Abdullah II with political and economic aid.

 

Jordan, a stunning desertscape and a tourist hotspot

 

There is an important reason for this US strategic interest in Jordan, it’s simply because the Kingdom has the longest land border with Israel and has the largest Palestinian population outside of the West Bank and Gaza, made up of both holders and non-holders of Jordanian citizenship. All this makes the country potentially a serious threat to Israel.

 

“Jordan remains a linchpin for the United States in the Middle East thanks to the bilateral security partnership and the kingdom’s moderate political leadership,” wrote The Washington Institutes’ Ben Fishman last year after war broke out. In 2022, the US signed a seven-year $1.45 billion annual aid agreement with Jordan. This made the Kingdom the second-largest recipient of US assistance in the world after Israel. But Fishman noted that even this largess does not preclude “occasional anti-American” protests, especially over US forces using Jordanian airbases. As established in a 2021 security agreement, the US can use Jordanian airfields to “deter regional widening of the current conflict” Fishman wrote, but must do so “as subtly as possible”, he adds.

 

Fishman notes in his analysis that both Israel and Jordan have mutual interests in ensuring that the Gaza war does not spread to Jerusalem or the West Bank. While Jordan wants to ensure stability at home, I think it also fears that a wider regional war will eventually play out on its own territory, especially following rumors that Russia recently moved its forces in Syria close to the disputed Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

 

Israel “cannot afford to commit additional troops to the Jordanian border area or the broader West Bank” Fishman wrote, something that seven months of fighting in Gaza has confirmed. A wider war, he adds could very well fray strong bilateral security ties between Jordan and Israel, especially since the relationship between Netanyahu and King Abdullah II is far from amicable.

 

Jordan has a 482 kilometer-long land border with Israel stretching from the disputed Golan Heights through to the West Bank and the Dead Sea up to the Gulf of Aqaba, where the two countries have an established maritime boundary.

 

There is no way I can see Israel defending an almost 500km front in the event of a wider regional war and in the event of regime change in Jordan and the emergence of a pro-Palestine-liberation government in the Kingdom. The calculus is clear, Israel is too narrow a country and is peppered with too many hostile communities in the West Bank for its own citizen army (IDF) to defend against invasion successfully no matter the brutal tactics said army employs.

 

This is why Jordan will always be a de facto US base of operations and deterrence and why the regime in the Kingdom will never stray too far from broad support of US policy, while appeasing its own population with calls for an end to the war and the siege in Gaza and an end to Israeli incursions into the Aqsa compound. As is said, talk costs nothing as long as you don’t back up that talk with action.

 

But no amount of US and Israeli support of the regime in Jordan can prevent a popular uprising, the Shah’s regime in Iran is a case in point. Following the revolution in Iran it is said that the Khomeini gave Yasser Arafat the compound of the Israeli embassy in Tehran as a gift to the Palestinian people. The symbolism of this move wasn’t and isn’t lost on the Zionist regime, which four decades later decided to attack an Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria, a fateful move that could yet prove to be the first real spark that ignites a wider regional war.

 

It was said that Belgium was the proving ground of European politics and of European armies, from Louis XVI thru to Kaiser Wilhelm II. “Due to its strategic location as a country of contact between different cultures, Belgium has been called the “crossroads of Europe”; for the many armies fighting on its soil, it has also been called the “battlefield of Europe” or the “cockpit of Europe”,” according to the History of Belgium on Wikipedia. (I believe the later term refers to a cock fighting pit, as opposed to the cockpit of a jet fighter).

 

The same could be said of Jordan, the crossroads of the Middle East possibly, the facilitator of the Middle East certainly, being at relative arm’s length from both the Palestinians and the Israelis and their allies. I certainly hope it won’t be the battlefield of the Middle East as this country and its generous people hold a special place in my heart personally. But, the way things are going now, Jordan could yet prove to be where interesting things happen. In fact both Jordan’s topography and location makes it an attractive prize for both sides in this as yet unfulfilled regional war prophecy.