Jordan Caught in Iran's Crosshairs
Can the Hashemite Kingdom withstand Iran's attempts to topple it?
In 1953, Israeli forces attacked a small town in the West Bank called Qibya. The West Bank was a part of Jordan at this time, and many of the victims of the attack were Palestinian women and children. The attack on Qibya led by Ariel Sharon was in response to an earlier attack by fedayeen on a Jewish village called Yehud when a grenade was thrown into the house of a mother and two of her small children. Rage from the Palestinians bubbled over, and one man interviewed at the time expressed hatred at the Jordanian government “for not allowing us to take a gun and to go into Israel to shoot Jews.”1 Not only did the provoked Palestinians blame the government, but also the British and Americans who they saw as having the Jordanian monarchy in their pockets. They claimed the Legion did not come to the defense of Qibya for fear of losing funds from their Western backers.
The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser was studying this carefully, and he used the event to his advantage. Nasser had a sophisticated propaganda operation that he waged through his radio network called Voice of the Arabs. After the attack on Qibya, he invited Abdullah al-Tal onto the program. Abdullah al-Tal was once a Jordanian officer in the army that had defected to Nasser when Jordan’s king attempted to peacefully negotiate a settlement with Israel after the war in 1948. On Voice of the Arabs he called for “united action to expel imperialists” further reiterating in Palestinian and Jordanian minds that it was actually Western power that pulled the strings in their government.2 Nasser’s expansive propaganda was in response to the Baghdad Pact, an effort by the U.S. and Britain to contain the spread of communism in the Middle East that was similar to The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It would form an alliance between Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, and Britain which Nasser saw as a threat to his vision of a pan-Arabist Middle East led by him. Britain, with the help of Turkey, had planned to bring Jordan into the alliance and in retaliation Nasser increased his Voice of the Arabs campaign with the goal of destabilizing the small country. The Baghdad Pact was described as a method of keeping the Arabs divided and weak and therefore prone to exploitation by British and American imperialists. This implicitly sent the message that any Arab country that chose to enter into the alliance was at best being forced into the pact via manipulation or arm-twisting from the West or at worst, as willing participants in a plot that betrayed Arab interests.
In addition to the aggressive propaganda campaign, Nasser sent Egyptian operatives to Jordan with instructions to create on the ground networks of opposition. The aim was to shape the average person’s perception of the Baghdad Pact but also create a climate of resistance that would put pressure on King Hussein. This placed the King in a bind because if the government openly supported the idea of joining the pact then public opinion would take a sharp turn against leadership, but if the King rejected the protective umbrella of the Western powers then he was left to fend against Nasser’s subversion machine by himself.
The extent of this crusade to undermine the Baghdad Pact, and the different measures taken to assure its success is underrated, in my opinion. While negotiations were taking place between Sir Gerald Templer, one of Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s most trusted military advisers, and the Jordanian government, an undercover Egyptian agent was following events from inside. This agent was none other than Colonel Anwar al-Sadat, who would eventually become Nasser’s successor and openly admitted to contributing to the plot that would sabotage talks of Jordan entering into the Baghdad Pact. Sadat openly makes this admission in his memoirs stating, “It is no exaggeration that I played an important part in the frustration of the Baghdad Pact.”3 The Egyptian officer had given four Palestinian officials a bribe to leave Prime Minister Said al-Mufti’s government which would end it and negotiations. Afterwards when the King appointed another proponent of the Baghdad Pact, Hazza Majali, “the country exploded in riots.” 4 Here we see a concerted effort by Nasser to not only disrupt negotiations from above within the government but to also add pressure from below by coordinating opposition groups made up of people from the street.
King Hussein rejected the deal in order to distance himself from the British, but this did not stop an assassination attempt. Three days after King Huessein’s life was almost extinguished, Iraq revolutionaries overthrew the Iraqi government as the result of a long, targeted propaganda operation also conducted by Nasser. Iraq was part of the Baghdad Pact, and the country had been the object of Nasser’s contempt for this betrayal. The royal family was massacred, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Said was taken captive. He was murdered and a mob hung his mutilated body from a balcony. The men who orchestrated this gruesome coup were Abdul Salam Arif and Abdel Karim Qasim. Arif was part of a Free Officers group in Iraq that backed Nasser’s pan-Arabism, and Qasim who envisioned Iraq as a secular, nationalist state. Eventually a power struggle would ensue between the two and Qasim would be executed. The end of Hashemite reign had ended in Iraq and the Arab Socialist Union came to power under Arif. 5
Today the Middle East has another regional power with great ambition like Nasser once had in the 1950s. While Nasser was a pan-Arabist and Iran is committed to an Islamist ideology, the use of propaganda and proxy networks to agitate inside other countries in order to expand its influence is the same strategy. Iran has been incredibly successful in its endeavors. It essentially controls Lebanon through its proxy Hezbollah, quelling any dissent from what little government doesn’t remain under its control. The group continues to escalate its rocket attacks in northern Israel where around 60,000 civilians have been evacuated, and the U.S. remains intent on restraining the Jewish state from retaliating. Its proxy Hamas receives not only broad support in Gaza but is reported to be more popular than the ruling party Fatah in the West Bank. It has been able to manipulate international opinion against Israel after its slaughter of civilians on October 7th, 2023 and exacerbate rifts between the U.S. and Israel throughout the war. The Houthis attack ships in the Red Sea with what seems to be impunity, disrupting trade across the globe. You gotta give it to them, Iran takes the prize for agent of chaos.
Jordan, just like with Nasser, has been able to stand strong against its powerful rival. Once again, the tiny country is forced to do an impossible balancing act where it does not wish to provoke Iran or lose U.S. support. To walk this tightrope, it remains a non-NATO U.S. ally while giving the impression that it condemns the U.S. for supporting the evil Zionist entity. In May, a cell within the Muslim Brotherhood with links to Hamas was caught attempting to smuggle weapons inside Jordan. Sources in Jordan suspect that these weapons were brought into the country for the purpose of undermining the monarchy, and a Brotherhood source revealed that radical members of this cell were recruited by Saleh al-Arouri. Arorui was a senior commander of Hamas in charge of recruitment and military operations in the West Bank. Experts credit him with reviving the group’s network in the West Bank since the Hamas-Fatah civil war that began after Fatah lost elections in 2006. Several countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have expelled the Muslim Brotherhood, but Jordan allows the group to legally operate within its borders. This is a risky move given its reputation for carrying out coups, but it seems the Jordanian government is betting on its relationship with the group to help inform it of plots like these from more extremist segments of the population. The pressure from within is only going to build as the war in Gaza drags on because Jordan is populated by 2.3 million Palestinians that simultaneously claim refugee status from UNWRA yet enjoy full citizenship. I can imagine a situation where Iran is willing to take advantage of this situation. After all, claiming the status of “refugee,” when one has all the rights of a citizen, is a political symbol that expresses a perceived right to return to old lands in Israel. If Iran is somehow able to infiltrate Jordan like Nasser did in the past, then mobilizing the disaffected Palestinian masses to further its regional aspirations of tightening the noose around Israel’s neck should be easy.
From Abdullah to Hussein: Jordan in Transition by Robert B. Satloff.
BBC, Summary of World Broadcasts, IV, No. 409.
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1948, V, Part , 975.
Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East by Michael Doran.
Many of the quotes come from Michael Doran’s citations in his wonderful book Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East.