This week, King Abdullah of Jordan, a country targeted by nearly 300 aerial strikes from Iran, met by phone with President Donald Trump and called for a political solution to de-escalate the Gulf showdown and ensure the security of Arab states. New analyses in the spring issue of Middle East Policy demonstrate how the kingdom, which had been at the center of an Arab-Israel effort to contain the Islamic Republic, skillfully manages its relations with regional states and external powers to navigate a delicate balance in its domestic politics between native Jordanians and millions of Palestinians whose families fled the occupation.
Middle East Policy has just released its 167th issue, with analyses of testimony from Palestinian women jailed by Israel, the unresolved question of sovereignty in Jerusalem, the emerging Israel-Turkey conflict in Syria, and Turkey’s aspiration to serve as a transregional energy hub. Readers can still access our free special issue, Washington’s War on Iran, featuring 14 examinations of the conflict, including Tehran’s response to the June 2025 military action, the voices of protesters against the Islamic Republic, and parallels with the 2003 Iraq invasion, especially the groupthink that produced the American folly. If you find this information useful, please forward it to others you believe will benefit; register to receive our weekly updates here. And please follow us on the social media platforms X and LinkedIn.
Ronen Yitzhak leads off the coverage of Jordan by pinpointing its key role in forming a tacit alliance of Gulf Arab monarchies and Israel to constrain Iran’s expansion of Shiite power through nonstate actors and its pursuit of a nuclear program. In 2004, as the US war on Iraq created a power vacuum, Abdullah coined the term “Shiite Crescent” to warn prospective partners of Tehran’s potential to dominate the region. The king soon leveraged his relations across a spectrum of interested states to develop a containment strategy.
In his analysis, outside the paywall at Middle East Policy, Yitzhak traces the genesis of this unlikely partnership to secret gatherings in Jordan that began in 2006:
While it continued its traditional role in mediating talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Amman quickly became a center for covert diplomatic activity against Iran’s nuclear program and its expansion in the Middle East. The meetings in Amman featured, in addition to Jordanian and Israeli officials, representatives from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar. For Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, this was the beginning of a new Israeli strategy to strengthen ties with Sunni Arab countries that had common interests. Israel understood that relations with Jordan were not enough, that other states were needed to thwart Iranian ambitions.
This helped to open direct lines of communication between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the power centers of a “strategic anti-Shiite alliance.”
Despite early progress, Jordan believed the partners would only remain aligned if there was a substantive Israeli effort to solve the Palestine question. In 2008, Abdullah pressured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: “Failure (of the peace talks) will give Iran and its proxies exactly what they’re looking for.” What the Islamic Republic was looking for were opportunities to sow divisions within Arab states, including Jordan.
Indeed, in their new article for Middle East Policy, Nur Köprülü and Fadi Al-Ghrouf show that this potential for Iranian influence within the Hashemite kingdom is driven by a central division between Palestinians and Transjordanians—those who do not claim Palestinian origin. The core concern of their analysis is how the monarchy has been able to overcome street demonstrations sparked by the Gaza war by relying on the non-Palestinian “East Bankers,” who have expressed dissatisfaction over economic conditions but have acted as a bulwark against regime change from within.
Köprülü and Al-Ghrouf provide a compelling history of Jordan’s state formation to show how the monarchy contended with the influx of refugees and Israel’s machinations in the occupied territories. This informs their exploration of how Amman has sought to preserve its power since the rise of Trump and the Gaza war. The authors identify three aspects of the post-October 7 conflict that threatened the kingdom:
- an influx of refugees from the West Bank
- increasing street demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians
- Israel’s expansion of the violence into Syria and Lebanon.
Abdullah has been able to survive the potential calls for regime change from within by demanding a resolution to the Palestinian question. This has allowed him to co-opt protest movements, some of which are based on frustrations with declining economic conditions, and channel them toward pro-Palestine sentiment.
While the regime survives, it now faces challenges not just from domestic and regional politics but from global politics, as well. Chen Kertcher and Carmela Lutmar make a persuasive case in their open-access contribution to Middle East Policy that the United States has been central to maintaining the fragile truce between Israel and Jordan. This enforcement of guarantees by an external mediator is one of two key aspects, along with the alignment of elite interests with the institutions that sustain them, they identify to explain the effectiveness and longevity of peace settlements.
While this helps explain why neither Jordan nor Egypt has withdrawn from their treaties with Israel since the start of the devastating Gaza war, US credibility may be thrown into question due to Washington’s direct partnership with Israel in bombing Iran and pursuing a regime-change strategy that has severely backfired. As the costly bombings and blockade drag on, American ineffectiveness may lead Arab and Israeli leaders to question whether the United States can effectively monitor and enforce compliance with these agreements, or provide compelling incentives for sustained cooperation.
You can find other analyses in our free special issue, Washington’s War on Iran, and in The Israel-Iran War, our coverage of the 2025 campaign against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. And check out the Middle East Policy Council’s website for insights from its analysts.
Middle East Policy, Spring 2026
JUSTICE IN PALESTINE
‘I Thought I Would Die’:
Testimony from Palestinian Women Jailed by Israel
Oqab Jabali | Saqer Jabali—free to read!
Jerusalem and the Unresolved Question of Sovereignty
Havva Yavuz
AMMAN’S BALANCING ACT
Jordan’s Role in Establishing a Sunni-Israeli Alliance Against Iran
Ronen Yitzhak—free to read!
Jordan’s Stability and Regime Survival amid the War on Palestinians
Nur Köprülü | Fadi Al-Ghrouf
Explaining the Post-October 7 Durability of Israel’s Peace Deals with Egypt and Jordan
Chen Kertcher | Carmela Lutmar—open access!
ANKARA’S AMBITIONS
Regime Change in Syria and the Emerging Israel-Turkey Conflict
Mehmet Doğan Üçok
Geopolitics and Aspirations for Sustainability: Turkey’s Emergence as an Energy Hub
Umud Shokri—open access!
Ottoman Coup Traditions and the Republican Army’s Legacy
Sertif Demir | Yaşar Ertürk
TURKEY-GULF RELATIONS
Geopolitical Rebranding of the ‘New Syria’ amid the Turkey-Gulf Rapprochement
Hae Won Jeong
Turkey’s Relations with Gulf States: Temporary Shift or Permanent Alignment?
Engin Koç
BOOK REVIEW
Gülistan Gürbey et al., Between Diplomacy and Non-Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of Kurdistan-Iraq and Palestine
Reviewed by Hogr Tarkhani
Daniel Drewski and Jürgen Gerhards, Framing Refugees: How the Admission of Refugees is Debated in Six Countries across the World
Reviewed by Emrah Atar
Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning; and Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce