By Mudar Zahran
Our Israeli and Western military sources have confirmed to us that American jets downed Iranian drones over Jordan’s capital, Amman and Zarqa, Jordan’s second largest city last night. Israeli jets shot down dozens of Iranian drones en route to Jordan at the borders with Iraq. The Israeli Force broke into the Iraqi air space to confront those. At the same time, US owned and operated ground-to-air defense capabilities were used last night.
At the same time, some media outlets have been attributing the elimination of Iranian drones over Jordan to the country’s air force. The claims Jordanian jets “had shot down an Israeli drone en route to Israel” were triggered by a report generated by Reuters chief reporter in Jordan Suleiman Al-Khalidi.
A Jordanian himself with dozens of his family members residing in Amman; it is needless to say Al Khalidi faces the Hashemite regime’s ruthless grip on any reports generated in Jordan. Nontheless, Al Khalidi’s original report quotes “two regional security sources” as his references. While the term “regional” is very vague by itself, one has to be curious about why the Jordanian Air Force itself has not yet published any reports confirming the alleged incident.
Historically, the Hashemite regime of Jordan has sustained an acute habit of publicly glorifying little achievements as epic victories. Were Jordanian jets involved, how come the Hashemites are not celebrating it this time? All they have done so far is a mere statement by Jordan’s prime minister, a man known to be a symbolic facade with very little powers and signifcance. This situation is similar in many ways to this example; in 2014, a least known Western researcher, who is a resident of Jordan, tweeted that Jordan’s king himself was piloting an F16 fighter jet to attack the Islamic State terror group in Syria. The king of Jordan has never been trained to fly an F16 and has never flown one. Nonetheless, the untruthful tweet took a life of its own and was shared even by Western celebrities. The imagination-rich tweetmaker apologized a month after his tweet. Nonetheless, his bogus story remains in circulation as of this day.
Ironically, some in the Israeli media quickly adopted Al-Khalidi’s report. One journalist ran a piece praising Jordan’s air force, emphasizing how it had turned “from foe to an ally”. Others used the report to epmhasize the claim that Jordan’s king was “essential to both Israel and US in confronting Iran”. This could not be further from the truth. Jordan’s king has been the closest ally to both Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. This we have documented for years. [https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/what_s_the_deal_with_the_anti_israel_protests_in_jordan.html]
Jordan’s king is not shy at all about his close ties to Iran. A crude example of this took place just a little over a month ago. While all Arab countries announced the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan at the exact date Sunni Saudi Arabia had, it was only Jordan’s regime that announced the beginning of the holy month at the time Iran had, a whole day after Saudi Arabia’s date. This is considered the ultimate violation of Islamic rules, which was viewed by Jordanians as making an entire nation miss a day of fasting just to appease Iran. While Jordanians took to social media to protest the move, the move was very symbolic of the king’s alliance with the Iranian axes in the region, which should come as no surprise given the king’s well-documented and self-confessed marriage to the Muslim Brotherhood. [https://www.jpost.com/opinion/its-official-jordan-is-now-allies-with-iran-opinion-673292]
It is time for the American and Israeli single-sided love affair to the hostile king to be reconsidered. This king is the only foreign leader in America’s history who dared to attack Israel right from the White House’s podium, all-knowing he could get away with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR0VQpXdTOc
Abdullah even acknowledges his ties to Iran in his own memoir, proudly posting a photo of himself visiting Tehran and meeting the Ayatollah. It is safe to say this man has been recklessly gambling with Jordan’s long-term stability, compromising the balance of Arab Sunni states, ruthlessly lobbying against Israel, and above all his regime is not stable. He has become a very expensive liability for the US and Israel to sustain.
The demise of Abdullah’s regime is not is not unplausible. The US and Israel must not be caught off guard.
If Jordanian forces were engaged at all in this recent skirmish, my guess is that they were trying to kill those rockets that had a trajectory dangerous to some target of interest in Jordan. They would, of course, let missiles, well on their way to Israel, proceed. While the Jordanians need a new government, everybody else should do their best to ensure it is a government that causes the least trouble, i.e. no Muslim brotherhood and associates.