Jordanian King Abdullah II affirmed his country’s position on “not allowing Jordan to be a battlefield for any party.”
His comments, which came during a meeting on Tuesday with figures from the Mafraq Governorate (70 kilometers northeast of the capital), reflected the same stance that the king conveyed to US President Joe Biden on Sunday.
During a telephone call with Biden, King Abdullah stressed that his country will not “be an arena for a regional war,” calling for the need to “immediately stop the escalation in the region,” and saying that any “Israeli escalatory measures will lead to expanding the circle of conflict.”
At dawn on Sunday, Fars News Agency quoted a military source as saying that the Iranian “armed forces are carefully monitoring Jordan’s movements during the process of disciplining the Zionist entity... If Jordan participates in any potential actions, it will be the next target.”
The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Sunday that it had summoned the Iranian ambassador to Amman and asked his country to “stop insulting and questioning” the kingdom’s positions.
Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in a televised appearance that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will try to create a confrontation with Iran to drag the United States and the West into a regional war, so the focus will shift toward Iran, and the world will forget about Gaza.”
Meanwhile, Jordanian sources confirmed “sensitive information about persistent Iranian efforts to target security in the kingdom” during the past few months.
Those were thwarted and kept secret to avoid causing more tension in the relationship between the two countries, according to the sources.
Jordan is aware that Tehran’s intentions are “to nurture security hotspots, which it will use to harass its opponents in the region.”
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, a political source noted that Iran wants to “destabilize Jordan and it is looking for a foothold that will disturb the kingdom.”
Earlier this month, Asharq Al-Awsat reported that pro-Iranian Iraqi militias have sought since Oct. 7 to carry out infiltration operations across the Jordanian border to support the Palestinian resistance.
But the Jordanian army was able to thwart many of these attempts, sending “serious threats” through official channels to bomb the Shiite militias that had set up camps in the Trebil area in Iraq, and forcing them to retreat 40 kilometers inside Iraqi territory.
“Amman does not trust Tehran” is a summary of the history of the relationship between the two countries, as described by Jordanian politicians and elites.
“The more chaos in the region expands... the more Iran is able to negotiate to achieve its interests, in a war it is conducting through its proxies,” said Minister Khaled Al-Kalaldeh.
