Living in the crossfire
Jordan’s growing national security crisis

A football match controversy can sometimes offer illuminating insights into international affairs. Take the 29 January game in Doha between Jordan and Iraq that ended 3-2 to Jordan and progress to the quarter-finals of the Asia Cup tournament. The last-minute winner scored by midfielder Nizar Al-Rashdan was easily the highlight of the game; of note also was the sending off of Iraq’s top striker Aymen Hussein. Iraq had won the Asia Cup in 2007 and was considered a strong team, and so naturally angry Iraqi supporters looking for a scapegoat found it in the shape of Iranian-Australian referee Alireza Faghani. He was accused of siding with the Jordanians and even of having “Zionist” sympathies. That’s when things turned ugly, for what followed was a social media exchange of sectarian memes and insults between Iraqi Shias and mainly Levantine Sunnis celebrating Jordan’s defeat of a “Shia” team. The descent to name-calling of this kind reflects wider hostility between Iran and its allies – perceived to be on the march – and Sunni Arabs keen to see them checked. The latter have come to regard Jordan as the new ‘guardian of the eastern gate’: a bulwark against growing Iranian encroachment radiating from Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. 

This is not a role that Jordan particularly wants or relishes. King Abdullah II in 2004 first publicly warned of an emerging “Shia crescent” that would destabilise the region; but balanced against legitimate national security concerns were matters of investment and jobs, and Jordan saw Iraq as the key to its economic security. The conflict in Syria added new economic and security pressures on the kingdom: disrupted trade, 800,000 refugees, drug and arms smuggling, and IRGC groups on its northern and eastern borders. The 2023 Hamas-Israel war has only piled on the pressure by heightening the risks of internal instability and the forced transfer of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. 

Living in the crossfire is not new for Jordan. It has faced down a PLO insurrection, a Syrian invasion, two Gulf wars, two intifadas, an Al-Qaeda terror campaign, and 16 years of Benjamin Netanyahu. It has been able to do so because Jordan’s rulers could always rely on solid US and UK political and military support in return for use of its territory and diplomatic and intelligence services: running discreet backchannels with Israel, the PLO, Hamas, and Saddam in the 1980s and 1990s for example. That role, which allowed the kingdom to punch well above its weight in the region, has now been usurped by Gulf states that can back up their diplomacy with cash and are less encumbered with domestic stability concerns. On Gaza, it was Qatar that took the lead on brokering a ceasefire and prisoner exchanges. 

False re-set 
Nothing exemplifies Jordan’s fall from the political A-league more than its failure on Syria. Its championing of step-for-step re-engagement with Damascus gave it a leading role in the creation of the Arab League’s Contact Group, which was meant to implement a Jordanian-drafted roadmap based on the famous non-paper presented to Washington in 2021. Jordan’s Syria initiative was meant to be a re-set for Jordanian diplomacy but it also aimed to stimulate trade with Syria and reinvigorate the commercial transit of goods that netted Jordan a healthy income in fees. As part of the roadmap, Assad had to deliver on two main issues: return of refugees and ending drug smuggling. The momentum for this initiative was short-lived, however, as Assad stonewalled the process and Saudi Arabia and the UAE embraced bilateral diplomacy with Damascus, by-passing Amman entirely. Predictably, the Contact Group went nowhere. 

Meanwhile, Jordan’s northern border was being assailed daily by drug smuggling gangs operating out of southern Syria supported by the Assad regime and Hezbollah. With the Gaza war, the same gangs smuggling drugs to Saudi Arabia started to smuggle weapons to the West Bank via Jordan. On 6 January a major clash occurred with a large group of armed smugglers resulting in five being killed and their cargo of explosives and munitions seized. On 10 January Jordanian special forces carried out a raid inside Syrian territory to arrest smugglers after the regime refused to do so. On 18 January ten civilians were killed when Jordan’s air force bombed a suspected drug warehouse. The strikes and the raids provoked a strong exchange of words between Damascus and Amman, the latter speaking of “dangerous Iranian groups” operating in Syria whose goal was “to undermine Jordan’s security.” The 28 January drone attack on Tower 22 that killed three US soldiers and the subsequent air strikes against Iran-backed groups brought into focus Jordan’s close military cooperation with the US. This angered Iran, just as its raids and air strikes against Syria have earned it the ire of Russia. 

The last flame 
Success at football was a welcome distraction for the Jordanian government, but in the real world crises abound. How it responds to them depends on the level of support it receives from its two traditional allies: the US and the UK. In December 2023 Amman approved a $2.9bn military budget, the highest in the kingdom’s history. It has procured more F-16s from the US, hundreds of second-hand armoured vehicles from the Netherlands, and established the Middle East's first drone and electronic warfare test range. No doubt some of these costs will be covered by Western military assistance, which may well expand. Building a wall along the border with Syria may also be considered, following the example of Turkey and Iraq. But tanks and concrete alone will not solve Jordan’s political and security crisis.  

On 12 February King Abdullah visited President Biden to discuss the most pressing concern: Gaza. Beyond that, a sustained dialogue between Jordan and the West needs to address the future of the country as a key node in the West’s security architecture. As the US now considers the possibility of military withdrawal from Iraq and Syria, Jordan might become the last secure foothold for the US in the Fertile Crescent. Strengthening Jordan as a non-kinetic response to the growth of Iranian influence might become a smart policy choice. Politically, the role of go-between may not be the most appropriate one for Jordan going forward. Instead, Jordan might want to assert itself more confidently as an alternative and altogether more humane model of governance to that of radical Sunni and Shia groups. The survival of Jordan’s monarchical system that is based on religious legitimacy but which has produced a stable, capitalist, pro-Western, quasi-secular, quasi-democratic state, is a remarkable achievement. It is the last vestige of an early 20th Century project that sought to create liberal Arab states that wedded tradition and modernity; its continued success rests on confidence, in itself and in its allies.