Jordan's King Abdullah is a former general and special forces commander who experts say has the resolve to follow through on his vow to crush ISIS.
Following the release of a ghastly video showing a captured Jordanian air force pilot being burned to death, the 53-year-old monarch warned that retribution will be swift. And with an army of more than 100,000 well-trained soldiers, tens of thousands more in reserves and a capable air force, Abdullah's kingdom is more than up to the task, Middle East experts told FoxNews.com.
"Their ability to do difficult things with small numbers of highly trained people is up there with some of the best militaries in the world," Jon Alterman, director of the Center for Strategic & International Studies' Middle East Program, said of Jordan's military.
"The king is very serious about being a military guy," Alterman said. "For much of his life, he thought he was going to be a special forces commander and for some time he was."
"He didn’t do that from the back of chauffeured cars. He did that from Black Hawk helicopters and command posts at the site of terrorist raids," he noted. "The military is what gets him excited."
Jordan's military has: 110,700 active duty personnel, 65,000 reserve. 1,321 tanks, 4,600 armored fighting vehicles. Air fleet includes 246 aircraft, including 74 fighter planes and 24 attack helicopters. The nation of 6 million has a defense budget of 1.5 billion.
The country can also count on support from other nations, including the U.S., many oil-rich gulf states, and possibly Japan, who saw two of its citizens beheaded by ISIS days before the video surfaced.
King Abdullah II ascended to the throne in February 1999 following the death of his father, King Hussein.
Abdullah, was schooled mainly in the West and has extensive military experience. He attended the Islamic Educational College in Amman before his education at St. Edmund's School in Hindhead, England, and later in the U.S. at Eaglebrook and Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. In 1980, he joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the British Army as a Second Lieutenant. Two years later, he completed a one-year course in Middle Eastern affairs at Pembroke College in Oxford and attended Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in 1987.
Abdullah became command of Jordan's special forces in 1993 and served as Major General in 1998.
Yes indeed Brother, very, very interesting development! Jordan's future is not pretty, during Isaiah 17, God has it reduced to unoccupied fields, right after Damascus is destroyed.
ReplyDeleteThen we also have Gods Judgements in Jeremiah 49. But, we know that the Tribulation Jewish Beleivers will flee to Jordan, and God Himself will protect them there, with satan NOT allowed to enter. WOW! His Word is astounding!