Geography is Jordan’s cruel master. Wedged between Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite Kingdom has long weathered regional conflicts that brought refugee influxes, financial turmoil, terrorist attacks, and other costly spillovers. Yet such proximate volatility also gives this patchy desert on the east bank of the Jordan River strategic relevance to the West. By framing the kingdom as an “island of stability” that could advance peace and resist extremism, the Hashemite monarchy has always attracted hefty diplomatic, economic, and military backing from the United States and its allies. In ordinary times, such hegemonic support has been enough to deter aggression and preserve its security.
However, this strategy has reached a breaking point. Jordan’s greatest foreign policy asset, its US alliance, now paradoxically jeopardizes it. Since October 2023, the Gaza War has accelerated Israel’s prospective annexation of the West Bank, which may displace millions more Palestinians onto the kingdom under the radical mantra that “Jordan is Palestine.” Yet Jordan cannot resist this existential threat, given its US-brokered peace treaty with Israel and Washington’s staunch support for Israeli militarism. Since February, the Iran conflict has further encaged the country. As it dutifully hosts substantial American military forces, Jordan has faced hundreds of Iranian air strikes. This has pushed a monarchy already anxious about Israeli expansionism and domestic opposition onto a war footing.
Herein lies Jordan’s new security dilemma. Squeezed between Israeli expansionism and Iranian attacks, the Hashemite Kingdom faces unprecedented threats to its sovereignty. Those challenges persist not despite, but because of, American hegemony.
The US Role in Jordan
Within the Middle East, Jordanian diplomacy under the late King Hussein, and now King Abdullah since 1999, has long balanced ever-changing alliances with humanitarian advocacy and tactical gamesmanship to advance Hashemite interests. However, the foundation of Jordan’s foreign policy since the Cold War has been the close relationship with the US. Jordan enjoys a privileged place in American grand strategy. King Abdullah, now the longest-tenured Arab head of state, has been the most frequent Arab leader to visit Washington this century. US officials frequently praise Jordan as an “oasis of moderation” while muting their human rights concerns, as its openness and pro-Western stance starkly contrast with the violence and chaos they associate with the rest of the region.
Such alignment has furnished resources vital to Jordanian stability. Of all the kingdom’s foreign aid donors, the US remains the most reliable. Today, Jordan receives nearly $1 billion annually in American economic assistance, which has mostly survived the steep aid cutbacks enacted by the Trump administration in 2025. The biggest component entails cash payments to rescue Jordan’s government from its deep fiscal deficits. Over two-thirds of every annual budget is devoted to civil salaries and pensions, as well as the military and security forces. Such bloated overspending has a political function: it helps preserve the monarchy’s domestic base of support among Transjordanian tribal communities, who almost wholly staff this public sector. Beyond this, US involvement has historically bolstered major aspects of the economy. Water infrastructure, food supply, health care, and even free trade policies after the 1990s—all reflect the work of American technocrats, capital, and planning.
Security assistance composes another pillar of dependency. Jordan receives over $800 million in annual US military aid, equivalent to a quarter of its own defense spending, which entails arms, training, and services. Beyond this, the 2021 US-Jordan Defense Cooperation Agreement helped integrate the kingdom fully into America’s regional military architecture. Though legal restrictions prevent open discussion about national security, the Jordanian public knows well that Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, 60 miles east of Amman, serves as a key hub for US forces, which explains why it was targeted by Iranian air strikes in March. Jordan also harbors NATO’s first liaison office in the Middle East, as well as British, French, and German troops. Yet the US overshadows all other allies. From border security and aerial radar to military tactics and intelligence gathering, American forces and technologies permeate Jordan’s defense doctrine.
All this support comes with a price: the US will protect Jordan, so long as it also advances its strategic interests. The kingdom has done this dutifully. Jordan collaborated with the War on Terror, supported the 2003 Iraq War, and hosted the multinational campaign against the Islamic State during the Syrian civil war. Jordan also acceded to the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, which elevated its value in Washington. Such geopolitical sublimation has never sat well with the Jordanian public, whose boisterous protests have often targeted the US alongside Israel, as well as domestic issues like corruption and unemployment. While President Trump has earned particular scorn, anti-American antipathy runs deeper. It stems from popular perceptions of the US as an arrogant imperial power whose sponsorship of Israel and reckless wars in Iraq and beyond have impoverished innumerable communities across the Arab world.
Still, Jordan’s ruling monarchy had little reason until recently to question its special US relationship. Domestic opposition was a small price to pay for Washington helping to underwrite the kingdom’s stability, so long as its regional policies did not endanger Jordanian sovereignty.
The Palestinian Conundrum
The Gaza War upended this assumption. The genocide shattered any lingering Jordanian doubt about Israel’s aspirations to exterminate Palestinian statehood, as well as American complicity in this outcome. Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the next logical step after Gaza’s dismemberment, now presents a mortal challenge to Jordanian sovereignty. Of all the Arab states, the Hashemite Kingdom has the most to lose from the death of the two-state solution, which throws into question its demographic balance, economic sustenance, and political order.
Jordan has been entangled with Zionist ambition over Palestinian land since the colonial era. The 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars complicated its position. Refugee flows turned this mostly tribal society into an urban Palestinian majority one. Because the West Bank fell under Jordanian rule between these wars, the Hashemite monarchy also claimed custodianship over Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa complex. Afterwards, while formal hostility characterized Jordan’s ties with Israel, ambiguity marked its stance on Palestine. King Hussein often jousted with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for leadership over the Palestinian cause, with the 1970 Black September civil war in Jordan representing a low point in this tense relationship.
By the 1980s, however, a new strategy crystallized. Amman ceded to the PLO the titular role as the vanguard of the Palestinian national movement, even surrendering its administrative claims over the West Bank in 1988. Jordanians continued advocating Palestinian independence, albeit for different reasons. All opposed Israel out of principle, and saw a Palestinian state anchored in the West Bank and Gaza as the quintessential Arab issue. However, some Transjordanians saw statehood as a means for Palestinian-Jordanians—most of whom had become citizens—to exit the country. Such views reflected the ethnocratic discrimination that had relegated many Palestinian-Jordanians to second-class status. Conversely, most Palestinian-Jordanians yearned for statehood, not necessarily because they intended to leave Jordan but on emotive grounds of human rights, basic dignity, and international law.
What instilled fear in Jordan was the right-wing Zionist ambition to annex the West Bank. Doing so would expel millions more Palestinians onto Jordan, justified with the delusion that the kingdom should serve as the alternative homeland for Palestine. Such ethnic cleansing would unleash calamity if it happened now. By making Transjordanians an even smaller demographic minority, it would spark social conflict around sensitive questions of identity and the place of Palestinians in political life, unresolved since Black September. Absorbing this new refugee flow would devastate a lethargic economy already struggling with hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. It would extinguish Hashemite custodianship over Jerusalem’s Islamic sites. It could even trigger the most radical version of Zionist irredentism, the “Greater Israel” project that seeks to occupy much of Jordan itself.
Preventing the Alternative Homeland
Preventing this alternative homeland option espoused by Israel, Jordan’s ultimate red line, has thus girded Hashemite diplomacy since the 1990s. It explains the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, which not only elevated US support but also promised to give Jordan more influence to advance Oslo’s two-state framework between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. However, the kingdom could not save the two-state solution from resurgent violence and Western neglect. As Israel’s increasingly extremist governments began embracing the alternative homeland project after the 2000s, Jordan could not prevent its relentless encroachment upon the West Bank, embodied by illegal settlements, military raids, and restrictions upon the Al-Aqsa compound.
Here, the double-edged effect of American support became painfully apparent. Despite the 1994 peace treaty, King Abdullah’s demands to Israel to halt such violations went nowhere. The carrot of cooperation, such as Jordan’s agreement to purchase Israeli natural gas in 2016, did not proffer more leverage on this issue. Neither could it credibly threaten to end the peace treaty, its only meaningful stick. Doing so would shatter US confidence in Amman, and likely bring sharp punishment such as cutoffs in American assistance that Jordan could not afford.
The Gaza War magnified these apprehensions. The genocide spurred the biggest wave of popular mobilization since the Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition movement, led many rallies. Again, though, Jordan’s leadership was entrapped by its American dependency. It could not abrogate the peace treaty as protesters demanded. Neither could it unilaterally halt an Israeli war machine funded and armed by Washington, whose economic and military support to Jordan was even more needed given its 21 percent unemployment rate, 24 percent poverty rate, and worsening militia and drug-smuggling attacks across the Syrian border. Given this tenuous position, Jordan could only do one thing—maintain domestic order. Authorities controversially suppressed anti-Israel protests throughout 2024 and, in April 2025, banned the Brotherhood.
Such intolerance of dissent, however, further estranges citizens from a monarchy that shares their solidarity with Palestine but can do little about it. Moreover, it does little to check Israel. The US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza says nothing about the West Bank, and leaves untouched Jordanian demands to halt further Israeli settlements and restore the two-state negotiation track. Over the past year, other signs have emerged that the annexation scheme is becoming inexorable, from the Knesset’s symbolic vote endorsing this plan to the Netanyahu government’s militarization of Israel’s southern border with Jordan. President Trump did promise in October 2025 that Israel would not absorb the West Bank, but his notoriously fickle words do not reassure Amman. All this explains why, on the eve of the Iran War, the Hashemite monarchy framed the alternative homeland scenario as an imminent national security crisis that imperiled its fundamental existence.
The Iran War
The Iran War amplified Jordan’s reeling sense of acute vulnerability. Until the April ceasefire, Iran launched 281 missiles and drones against US and other Western military installations throughout the kingdom as part of its regionwide retaliatory strategy. While Jordan’s military—using aircraft and defense systems supplied by the US, and guided by American radar and intelligence—intercepted most of them, falling debris and shrapnel injured several dozen civilians. In early March, Iranian hackers also breached several critical government and infrastructure systems.
Facing its greatest armed aggression since Black September, Jordan’s government announced a national emergency. Residents needed little reminder, given the frequent air raid sirens that punctuated most days in March. The bombardment far exceeded more recent Iranian intrusions, from the January 2024 Iraqi militia attack on the Tower 22 US base to the April 2024 and June 2025 interceptions of Iranian missiles targeting Israel.
Yet while patriotic rhetoric and declarations of Arab unity saturated public media, Jordanians privately voiced deep exasperation. Many saw the country held hostage to a fruitless conflict orchestrated by the US and Israel. After all, their leadership condemned Iranian attacks on Jordan—but did not pointedly denounce the illegal US and Israeli attacks against Iran that triggered the war. Moreover, Tehran’s declaration that Jordan represented a legitimate target given its American military forces signified that the US relationship, which should have deterred foreign aggression, was the reason why Jordanian airspace had become a battlefield.
To be sure, Jordan previously had shaky relations with Iran. King Abdullah, after all, stoked the winds of regional sectarianism after the Iraq War by warning that a “Shia crescent” menaced the Sunni Arab states. Jordanians share as low an opinion of Iran’s government as they do the US, with less than 20 percent of respondents in the latest Arab Barometer having a positive view of the Islamic Republic regime. However, open conflict was never the goal, not least because Iran dwarfs Jordan in strategic terms. Tellingly, even as Iranian-linked militias in Iraq and Syria began orchestrating small-scale attacks against the kingdom during the Syrian civil war, Jordan preserved diplomatic ties with Tehran. It does so even today, despite the futility of demanding that its Iranian counterparts halt air strikes.
The Iran War’s most deleterious cost festers in the economy, which, before the conflict, mightily struggled to deliver prosperity. According to the 2025 Arab Opinion Index poll, 54 percent of Jordanians reported their income did not cover their basic needs, the highest such proportion of all the Arab countries surveyed. Now, things will get harder. Disruptions to trade have raised local food and fuel prices. War-induced cutoffs in Israeli natural gas, used mainly to generate electricity, have saddled the government with the higher cost of switching to diesel fuel and alternative gas imports. The conflict has further flattened tourism, responsible for 15 percent of GDP, with the widespread cancellation of international tour groups—the sector’s lifeblood—extending well into the critical summer months.
Yet Jordanians have scant space to espouse their frustration outside the shrinking number of social media platforms and websites untouched by the draconian Cybercrimes Law. In early March, authorities banned any unlicensed reporting of Jordan’s “defensive effort.” Shelter-in-place orders effectively foreclose most popular protests. With the Brotherhood banished, the government has sought to stifle its political wing—the Islamic Action Front, which emerged as the winningest party in the September 2024 elections—with new regulations. Such limits to public opposition reflect the same tactic used during the Gaza War. Though unable to reshape events outside the country, the Jordanian state can still coercively impose internal calm.
No Good Options
Despite these restrictions, two sentiments have dominated popular discourse throughout the Iran War. Jordanians have mounted scathing criticisms against the US, as well as calls to strengthen ties with China and European powers. Diversifying its foreign policy in this way, as well as reinforcing its security alliances with other Arab states, has become a popular refrain. Moreover, not just citizens but King Abdullah and government officials have renewed their collective outrage against Israel following its wrenching invasion of Lebanon. They see the new Israeli-Lebanese conflict as evidence that Zionist expansionism has no limits: much as the Netanyahu government seeks to annex the West Bank, so too will it eventually occupy southern Lebanon with impunity. However, like the alternative homeland scenario, Jordan has no leverage to rein in Israel’s new war.
Yet Jordan does not have an alternative for its US dependence, despite friendly relations with other powers. The European Union is providing €3 billion in loans and investments for 2025-27. China is Jordan’s biggest trade importer, and applauds the kingdom as a “stabilizing force.” Ties with Russia are cordial, with the two countries signing a visa exemption agreement last year. But none of these actors can give the bulk cash grants that constitute the keystone of American aid, and which the Jordanian treasury needs to stay afloat. Neither are the EU, China, and Russia willing to provide the large-scale arms transfers necessary to wean the Jordanian armed forces off its reliance on the US military, or the troop deployments and security guarantees that can replace the American presence. King Abdullah’s own personal comfort with the US, given his American education and diplomatic familiarity in navigating Washington’s internal politics, also matters. Likewise, calls for Jordan to join an Arab security framework beyond the Arab League, such as an Arab NATO, are not new for a reason: such alliance proposals floated in Amman have historically floundered due to a lack of organizational leadership and inter-Arab rivalries.
As a result, Jordan has extremely limited options in enduring the current geopolitical storm. The Iran War has encircled the country, linking the threat of air strikes from the east with Israeli aggression from the west. The common denominator for both is the US. These external threats directly target Jordan’s sovereignty, unlike past regional conflicts. Ironically, its capacity to resist them is gravely hampered by its pro-American foreign policy, which confines the country to an unproductive peace treaty while rendering it a target for future Iranian attacks. At the same time, its dependence upon US support is ironclad, for if a better source of diplomatic backing, economic aid, and military assistance existed, then the monarchy would have already gravitated towards it.
Herein lies Jordan’s geopolitical dilemma. The great power hierarchy that Jordanian leadership has long needed—and still needs—to bolster its national security has instead made it less secure. As a result, the coming years will be among perilous ones, as they could reshape whether the Hashemite Kingdom remains the island of stability in the region.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
