Jordan's King Abdullah is the newest member of the Iranian axis. On June 27, Abdullah met in Baghdad with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi. The three leaders signed a deal to transport Iraqi oil to Europe through Jordan and Egypt. As Arab affairs scholar Dr. Edy Cohen put it in the Jerusalem Post, "This agreement is King Abdullah's 'coming out of the closet' with Iran. It's now official: Jordan is allied with Iran because Iraq is actually under Iran's control."
Just as Iran controls Lebanon through its Shiite proxy army Hezbollah, so Iran controls Iraq through the Iraqi Shiite militias that operate as its proxies.
In parallel to the oil deal, Abdullah has ended the prohibition on Iranian tourism to Jordan. The prohibition was put in place shortly after the 1979 Khomeinist revolution. To drive home the seriousness of his intentions, Abdullah visited a Shiite shrine in southern Jordan. The shrine, located south of Amman, belongs to Islamic Prophet Muhammad's cousin Jaffar Ibn Abu Taleb. It is considered a pilgrimage site for Shiite worshippers.
Jordanian officials estimate that a million Iranian tourists will soon begin pouring into Jordan, to the benefit of its flailing economy. Opening his kingdom to Shiite tourism isn't the only Iranian outreach activity Abdullah is undertaking. He has also ended a longstanding ban on Shiite proselytization, opening Jordanian society to Iranian cultural and political subversion. Throughout the Sunni Arab world and indeed, throughout the world, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has focused massive resources on conversion to Shiism. Terror cells from Germany to Morocco to Nicaragua have been formed by individuals converted and radicalized by Iranian regime-sponsored Shiite preachers.
Abdullah's embrace of Iran is no surprise. Over a decade ago, Abdullah faced a choice. On the one hand, the Obama administration had joined the Europeans and was seeking a rapprochement with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood as a means to realign the US alliance structure in the Middle East away from traditional US allies – Israel and the Sunni Arab states. Responding to Obama's betrayal, Israel and the Sunnis, led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE discovered that they had a key common interest in containing Iran and surviving the 44th president's administration. They began developing ties that were formalized in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
This brings us to Abdullah's "secret" meeting with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last Tuesday. The meeting was held in secret. When news of it was leaked on Thursday, Israel's leftist media began collectively praising Bennett's diplomatic skills. His predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu had cold relations with Abdullah due to the king's decision to side with the pro-Iranian axis. The two leaders didn't meet for years. Bennett, the media gushed, was succeeding where Netanyahu failed and shoring up Israel's relations with its key partner in the Arab world.
Three aspects of Bennett's meeting expose the ridiculousness of the praise and the danger his embrace of Abdullah poses to Israel's core strategic interests. The problem is the fact that it was held in secret. Jordan's economy is dependent on Israeli largesse. Were Israel to stop giving Jordan electricity and water below cost, chances would rise that the royal house would be overthrown. Abdullah owes his power to Israel.
The media claimed that the leak of the meeting embarrassed Abdullah. But actually, it embarrassed Israel. Rather than demand the respect due to his country. Bennett allowed an effective client to treat him – and through him Israel – like a mistress.
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