Will Jordan be Iran’s next target?

One of the pillars of Iran’s long-term strategy to destroy Israel is to encircle and strangle the Jewish state with proxy armies. This works particularly well targeting nations like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, whose governments are dysfunctional and corrupt and whose citizenry is in economic despair.

Combine this with asymmetric military and terror tactics and a good dose of decades-old incitement against Jews, and you get Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-directed Popular Mobilization Units in Syria and Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.

This has worked so well that it is only logical that Iran’s next victim would be the Kingdom of Jordan, a nation with profound socio-economic problems and endemic antisemitism. Jordan hosts millions of refugees and its disgruntled populace suffers from high unemployment. It sits strategically to the east of Israel and the West Bank, whose Palestinian citizens have never given up hope for a Palestinian nation “from the river to the sea.”

Jordan is listed by Freedom House as “not free.” Adam Coogle, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East, writes that “despite the view of Jordan as a stable country, public discontent has become increasingly visible in recent years.” A visiting fellow at Brookings Doha, Yasmina Abouzzohour, said Jordan is best described as a “soft dictatorship,”

So why have the U.S. and Israel considered Jordan a stable, reliable ally? Good question.

In fact, Jordan is the next logical target of Iran in its crusade to demoralize Israelis, knowing winning a conventional war is not now in the cards. Iranian destabilization of the kingdom makes perfect sense, to create an environment where Iranian allies like Hamas and Islamic Jihad can flourish and destabilize the West Bank.

Ten years ago, when I asked Israeli political and security leaders what they would do if Jordan were attacked, I often heard they would put IDF soldiers in harm’s way to prop up King Abdullah II, as it was a vital strategic interest. Today when I ask that same question to Israelis, I rarely hear anyone recommending that option, even if Jordan is under intense pressure.

They still consider Jordan essential for strategic interests, but their willingness to fight for those interests has dramatically decreased.

The use of proxies allows the Iranians to claim plausible deniability that they aren’t involved in terrorizing Israel or Jews worldwide. Sadly, the Europeans believe this. They cannot hold themselves back from economic opportunities, even with a state sponsor of terror.

In the north, Iran controls Lebanon through its Hezbollah proxy. In Syria, the dysfunctional state reciprocates Iran’s support for its genocidal president by allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps free rein to set up military posts on Israel’s border, purge Sunni Muslims from southern Syria, and transfer precision-guided missiles through Syria to Lebanon. To the West, Iran effectively controls, in whole or part, the Iraqi military and parliament.

In fact, Iraq can be considered a model for what Iran wants to do to control Jordan. As the headline of Michael Knight’s article in Foreign Affairs put it, “Iraq is quietly falling apart.” Iranian-controlled Popular Mobilization Units have been incorporated into the Iraqi army, and many Iraqi politicians are either too fearful to resist or outright supportive of Iran. This has turned Iraq into an Iranian hegemonic success story.

To Israel’s south and east, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad work closely with Iran in their shared goal to threaten Israel in a multi-front war. And far to the south, don’t forget about Yemen’s Houthis, under the direction of Iran. They too can be activated in a regional war, sending cruise missiles toward Tel Aviv, as they have attacked Saudi Arabia.

Where is Iran’s gaze now? Seth Frantzman writes that Iran is closely watching the results of its instigation in the clashes in the West Bank, primarily in Jenin. It is trying to destabilize the territories to create a power vacuum. “Iran seeks to not only move weapons to the West Bank but also create conditions to threaten Israel from multiple areas.”

To the east of a destabilized West Bank is Jordan, a poverty-stricken nation on Israel’s doorstep — a country we take for granted as stable because its westernized king makes his rounds in Washington, seeming the essence of the enlightened despot, talking up the supposed stability of his country.

So how would Iran destabilize Jordan to set the stage for a pro-Iranian regime — or, better yet, set up mobilization units to dominate the country, as they did in Syria?

Since Abdullah has control of his parliament and loyalty from his professional military, the most likely scenario is a ground-up approach, targeting Jordan’s vulnerable population. They will cultivate support among the poor, the ignorant, Islamists, the disgruntled majority of Palestinians, and the millions of displaced refugees from the Syrian and Iraqi wars, who have little hope for a better life.

Now is the time to help stabilize Abdullah and his “soft” authoritarian regime. Claiming it is stable while ignoring the reality would be a head-in-the-sane approach, not unlike President Jimmy Carter’s infamous characterization of the Shah’s Iran as “an island of stability.”

The U.S. must respond by leveraging Jordan’s dependence on our generous financial aid to warm relations between Israel and Jordan. Jordan receives more economic support from the U.S. than Egypt, a nation whose population is ten times as great. American assistance has more than doubled in less than ten years.

With American help, Jordan, Israel, and the UAE agreed to a deal for Jordanian solar plants to power Israel. Israel, in turn, will provide the parched Kingdom with water. New economic initiatives between the nations fostered by the U.S. are essential to allow Jordan to become economically self-sufficient.

Let’s redirect the $140 million of American aid we send to the Lebanese Armed Forces, who are under the thumb of Hezbollah, for economic development in Jordan.

Next, we must convince our European allies to ante up with financial aid to Jordan, as an Iranian-controlled Levant would be much closer to their doorstep.

Finally, we should remind the King that American support needs to be reciprocated. He must end the endemic anti-Semitism that pervades the Jordanian schools, media, mosques, and government, and which flies in the face of President Biden’s just-released anti-Semitism initiative. Without change, the incitement will one day backfire on his monarchy.

Eric Mandel is director of the Middle East Political Information Network.