One of the U.S.\u2019s closest Mideast allies, Jordan, has been hit by demonstrations that, according to some analysts, have spilled over into a serious threat to the Hashemite Kingdom with open declarations of support for the Hamas terrorist organization.<\/p>\n
Jordan\u2019s government has been one of the most vocal opponents of Israel\u2019s war to root out Hamas terrorists from Gaza after the jihadi movement slaughtered 1,200 people on Oct. 7, including many Americans.<\/p>\n
Jordan\u2019s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister\u00a0Ayman Safadi declared in November that \u2018Hamas is an idea and ideas do not die.\u2019 Jordan\u2019s Queen\u00a0Rania cast doubt in a CNN interview on whether Hamas really committed atrocities on Oct. 7.<\/p>\n
Veteran experts on Jordan view King\u00a0Abdullah II and his inner circle as contributing, directly and indirectly, to the unrest that could potentially dislodge his regime.<\/p>\n
The former Israeli ambassador to Jordan, Jacob Rosen, told Fox News Digital\u00a0that \u2018Jordan is walking on a very tight rope. The authorities let the Muslim Brotherhood\u00a0under whatever cover they operate to voice out their\u00a0message, but they disperse any demonstrations [that]] may go \u2018wrong\u2019 or to turn against the government itself.\u2019<\/p>\n
Rosen, who speaks fluent Arabic and is a leading expert on the Hashemite Kingdom, added that Jordan \u2018operates for some years a military hospital in Gaza, which has no choice but to be in contact\u00a0with\u00a0whoever is in control there. There is also a sizable contingent of Gazans in Jordan (at least 300,000), which has to be considered.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Parallel to that, the minister\u00a0of foreign affairs, Ayman Safadi, has a free hand with anti-Israeli rhetoric accusing Israel of genocide and warning against\u00a0ethnic cleansing. But in any case, Jordan cannot condemn Hamas directly but let some publicists or ex-ministers to do that.\u2019<\/p>\n
Last week, protesters chanted,\u00a0\u2018We are your men, Sinwar.\u2019 Yehya Sinwar is the Hamas mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attack and is believed to be hiding in Gaza\u2019s vast underground tunnel system.<\/p>\n
Walid Phares, an expert in foreign policy, told Fox News Digital,\u00a0\u2018What is happening in Jordan now, while it appears as chaotic, is in fact tightly organized by Hamas, the larger Muslim Brotherhood network and the Iran regime. The protests against the Israeli Embassy and spillover in Amman\u2019s streets are the result of tightly coordinated moves by the Iran and Ikhwan networks, with the real target being the Hashemite Kingdom itself.\u2019<\/p>\n
The term \u2018Ikhwan\u2019 is an Arabic word that refers to the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have classified the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.<\/p>\n
Indeed, just this week, the former Jordanian minister of information, Samih Al-Maaytah, said on the Saudi Arabian TV network Al Arabiya, \u2018The Hamas leaders in Qatar have incited the Jordanian public, and they are inciting the tribes, inciting people to take to the streets and to chant new [anti-Jordanian] slogans. They are trying to say to Jordan, \u2018We own the Jordanian public.\u201d The U.S.-based Middle East Media Research Institute first located and translated Al-Maaytah\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
It was also reported in Israeli media that\u00a0Al-Maaytah told another Saudi channel, AlHadath,\u00a0that Hamas leader\u00a0Khaled Meshaal was sowing discord among Palestinian clans in the kingdom. Al-Maaytah suggested that Meshaal be stripped of his Jordanian citizenship as well as those stoking conflict.<\/p>\n
Phares, the author of \u2018Iran: An Imperialist Republic and U.S. Policy,\u2019 said, \u2018Some in Israel and the U.S. assert that the queen and foreign minister \u2018contributed\u2019 in encouraging demonstrations against Israel. But an examination of the domestic situation in Jordan shows that the royal government had to show that they are in solidarity with the Palestinian people as a way to avert an intifada waged by Hamas, precisely. Jordanians argue that had the U.S. administration not been so attached to the Iran deal, Hamas wouldn\u2019t have been\u00a0encouraged to attack Israel, and Arab allies would have acted differently and earlier.\u2019<\/p>\n
He continued, \u2018Hence, we know that Tehran and Damascus have been targeting the Hashemite Kingdom for years, and now it looks like they\u2019ve unleashed their supporters against the regime.\u2019<\/p>\n
The fragility of Jordan\u2019s kingdom has made it a target for past efforts to oust the king.\u00a0The nation does not have an oil and gas industry. The unemployment rate is more than 20% and the kingdom has made no real effort to heighten awareness about the need for peace with Israel\u2019s population following the 1994 peace accord between the Jewish state and Amman.<\/p>\n
Phares said that \u2018Almost half of the Jordanian population is of Palestinian descent, and an attempt by Yasser Arafat and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), backed by the Assad regime [in Syria], to take over the country was averted by the loyal Jordanian armed forces.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The more Israel closed in on Hamas the more the Islamists of Jordan closed in on the Jordanian government,\u2019 he continued. \u2018Obviously, the best gate for Iran and the Brotherhood \u2013 read, Hamas \u2013 to ignite an intifada in the kingdom is a series of violent protests against the Israeli Embassy to appear in sync with the protests everywhere else. But the second stage is in the form of clashes with Jordanian security forces. This old Bolshevik and later jihadi tactic aims at putting large segments of society against their own armed forces, which I believe is the ultimate goal of the Iran axis. It is about taking out Jordan as a Western ally and spread chaos, leading to sending militias across the borders.\u2019<\/p>\n
President Biden\u00a0met with Abdullah in February at the White House, where the leaders discussed the war in Gaza.\u00a0King Abdullah said, \u2018We cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah,\u2019 adding that \u2018It is certain to produce another humanitarian catastrophe.\u2019 The last vestiges of Hamas\u2019 battalions are in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also holding more than 100 hostages who are believed to be in Rafah.<\/p>\n
Biden thanked Jordan at the meeting for its humanitarian aid to Gaza, stating,\u00a0\u2018We\u2019re grateful to our partners and allies like the king who work with us every single day to advance security and stability across the region and beyond. It\u2019s difficult times like these when the bonds between nations are more important than ever.\u2019<\/p>\n
Biden said at the meeting with the king that a Palestinian state could lead to stability and peace with Israel\u2019s Arab neighbors.<\/p>\n
\u2018That effort was underway before the Oct. 7 attacks,\u2019 Biden said, adding, \u2018It\u2019s even more urgent today.\u2019<\/p>\n
The mood in Israel, however, largely contradicts Biden\u2019s optimism, as most Israelis see the\u00a0two-state solution as a kind of dead-man-walking idea after more than 70 years of failed attempts.<\/p>\n
An unnamed Jordanian official\u00a0condemned the protests by saying, \u2018Hamas is inciting and trying to ignite unrest inside the kingdom. We will not allow it to achieve its goal.\u2019<\/p>\n
The growing Iranian threat to Jordan\u2019s government further surfaced when a security official from the pro-Iran regime militia said about intervention in the Hashemite Kingdom: \u2018The \u2018Islamic Resistance in Iraq\u2019 is ready to meet the needs of 12,000 fighters \u2026 so that we can stand united in defending our brothers in Palestine.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The security situation for Jordan appears to be raising alarm bells within the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (known as Judea and Samaria in Israel).<\/p>\n
\u2018The President of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke with King Abdullah II on Tuesday and reiterated during the call\u00a0Palestine\u2019s stand in solidarity with the Kingdom of Jordan, headed by King Abdullah II,\u2019 according to the Palestinian WAFA news agency.\u00a0WAFA also wrote, \u2018President Abbas stressed the complete rejection of all attempts to tamper with Jordan\u2019s security and stability or attempts to exploit the suffering of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip to tamper with the Jordanian arena, affirming the rejection of any external interference in the internal Jordanian affairs.\u2019<\/p>\n
The external interference is an apparent reference to the pro-Iranian regime proxies in Iraq.<\/p>\n
A Jordanian government spokesperson had \u2018No comment\u2019 when asked by Fox News Digital about the recent unrest in Amman, anti-Israel rhetoric from the government, and whether Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n\n
One of the U.S.\u2019s closest Mideast allies, Jordan, has been hit by demonstrations that, according to some analysts, have spilled over into a serious threat to the Hashemite Kingdom with open declarations of support for the Hamas terrorist organization. Jordan\u2019s government has been one of the most vocal opponents of Israel\u2019s war to root out <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}