In July 2021, the primary time that King Abdullah II of Jordan met with President Joseph R. Biden Jr., he was greeted warmly as a dependable American companion whose nation is a bulwark for safety within the Center East.
“You reside in a tricky neighborhood,” Mr. Biden stated as they sat within the Oval Workplace.
The king, who will meet with President Trump on Tuesday, could discover Washington to be the more durable neighborhood this time round.
Mr. Trump has reiterated his intention to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as a part of his plan for america to “personal” the territory, and on Monday he recommended he may take into account slashing support to Jordan and Egypt if their governments refused to soak up an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians from Gaza.
Each Jordan and Egypt flatly rejected the concept when Mr. Trump first raised it final week, placing King Abdullah in a bind as he prepares to satisfy with the president.
Rebuffing Mr. Trump’s calls for may imperil the greater than $1.5 billion in overseas support that Jordan receives every year from america. A separate, labeled stream of American cash flows to Jordan’s intelligence providers.
On the similar time, greater than half of King Abdullah’s roughly 12 million topics are of Palestinian descent, and Center East consultants say that the survival of his household’s rule will depend on him digging in towards Mr. Trump’s plan.
“King Abdullah can not go together with it,” stated Paul Salem, the vp for worldwide engagement on the Center East Institute in Washington. “He can not survive the concept he’s colluding on the ethnic cleaning of Palestinians.”
“It’s existential for him and his authorities.”
King Abdullah can be anticipated to make use of his assembly with Mr. Trump to push towards any makes an attempt by Israel to annex half or the entire West Financial institution, which far-right members of Israel’s authorities communicate overtly about and a few of Mr. Trump’s appointees have lengthy advocated. The West Financial institution sits instantly on Jordan’s border, and an Israeli transfer to take extra Palestinian land may result in violence and unrest that would spill into Jordan.
Jordan is already dwelling to roughly 700,000 refugees, most of them Syrians who fled from that nation’s civil battle.
In contrast to a few of its Center Jap neighbors which might be drowning in oil wealth, Jordan is closely reliant on American support. King Abdullah works laborious to domesticate shut ties throughout the U.S. authorities, and makes it some extent to be the primary Arab chief to satisfy with each new president.
Jordan permits U.S. troops entry to its navy bases, and for many years has obtained hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from the C.I.A. to help its intelligence providers — secret funds that started in the course of the reign of the present king’s father, King Hussein.
American support to Jordan, together with navy support, is at present frozen as a part of the Trump administration’s blanket halt to overseas help. The united statesA.I.D. workplace within the nation is being shuttered.
King Abdullah, who assumed the throne in 1999, is the longest at present serving chief within the Center East. Bruce Riedel, a former high Center East analyst on the C.I.A., stated that the king is probably going to make use of his robust relationships with the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and Congress to attempt to advise the president {that a} U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip and the expulsion of Palestinians is “a foul thought.”
The king met on Sunday with Pete Hegseth, the protection secretary, and Mr. Riedel says that Jordan “has plenty of supporters on the Hill, together with plenty of Republican supporters.”
Nonetheless, King Abdullah may want to seek out new patrons if Mr. Trump decides to chop funding to Jordan over its refusal to go together with his plan for Gaza. If this occurs, he may discover prepared donors within the governments of rich gulf international locations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have additionally strongly opposed Mr. Trump’s plan for an American takeover of Gaza and expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
Mr. Salem believes that Mr. Trump’s largest aim within the Center East remains to be a grand deal that may contain Saudi Arabia formally recognizing Israel, one thing it will be extraordinarily unlikely to comply with if Mr. Trump follows by on his plans for Gaza.
The Saudi authorities has stated that there have to be concrete steps towards an impartial Palestinian state earlier than the dominion considers normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel
For that reason, King Abdullah may have a little bit of leverage. He may attempt to persuade a mercurial American president to maintain his eyes on the bigger prize, and persuade him that Jordan is important to serving to him attain it.
