The October 7, 2023 Hamas assault on Israel changed the conversation about the Middle East. Just days prior to the attack, the White House believed its policy ameliorating Iran was successful. “The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in Foreign Affairs.
While President Joe Biden initially supported Israel’s right to defend itself and eradicate the terrorist threat, his top aides increasingly reverse course. Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken seek to coerce Israel to pause if not end her fight in Rafah, where many Hamas leaders and terrorist shelter.
Three factors motivate the White House turn against Israel.
First is ideology. Biden may be sincere in his affinity for the Jewish state, but top aides like Blinken, Sullivan, and top Sullivan deputy Jon Finer do not share his affection. Bias runs deep in the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency, both of which blame Israel’s creation as original sin in the region. Biden’s political strategists confuse the vocal fringe with their base.
Second is political calculation. While the U.S. campaign to liberate Iraqi and Syrian towns and cities from the Islamic State was as destructive if not more as the Israeli campaign in Gaza, the White House counsels that Israel essentially snatch defeat from the jaws of victory for the sake of Biden’s political convenience.
Third is a belief in Washington that ameliorating the majority trumps moral clarity. Two decades ago, presidents and politicians understood leadership sometimes meant standing alone for principle. In 2001, for example, Mary Robinson, the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, allowed radical groups and rejectionist regimes to transform her Durban “Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” into an orgy of antisemitism. Most countries joined Robinson’s shame but, rather than accede to the mob, President George W. Bush’s administration withdrew.
Many countries today turn against Israel because it is easy and popular with intelligentsia and the global south. Some also find it easier to endorse radical causes in the naïve belief that it will immunize themselves from being targets themselves. That Biden’s team believes being a finger in the dyke of antisemitism is somehow improper diplomacy will be a stain on their legacy.
The White House and Congress obsession with Israel and Biden’s personal dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, may blind Washington to a looming crisis whose reverberations will be far more damaging than the war in Gaza: the fall of Jordan.
For decades, the United States has relied on Jordan as an intelligence and diplomatic partner and force for stability in the region. Seldom does Washington question the stability of Jordan’s century-old monarchy though, increasingly in the region, Arab analysts and officials say the United States should.
King Abdullah II is far more popular outside the Kingdom than inside, a situation akin to the discrepancy between Mikhail Gorbachev’s popularity in the West versus inside the Soviet Union. Americans, for example, may find his obsession with Star Trek endearing. Abdullah II even worked his way into a cameo role in one of Star Trek’s spin off series. Islamists, however, find science fiction sacrilege, though, as only God can know the future. Last year’s royal wedding between Crown Prince Hussein and Princess Rajwa stroked the ego of think tankers, journalists, and former officials, too many of whom refrain from critical analysis in order to maintain access.
Jordanians resent the Abdullah II’s corruption. While Queen Rania’s Palestinian roots in theory could unite Jordanian East Bank Bedouin and post-1967 Palestinian influx, her conspicuous consumption and spendthrift ways antagonize poor Jordanians. The same corruption is fodder for the Muslim Brotherhood and Jordanian Islamists.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei completes the perfect storm. Neither Iranian support for Hamas nor Hezbollah is enough to threaten the Jewish state’s existence. Jordan’s 300-mile frontier with Israel and the West Bank is different. Khamenei views Jordan as a domino that must fall in order to fulfill his goal to eradicate Israel. If Iran can establish a land bridge through Jordan into the West Bank, the operational environment in Israel changes significantly.
That land bridge is now possible. Jordan today faces pressure from both the resurgent Assad regime in Syria, on the rebound after its civil war victory, and Iraq, where Iranian-directed militias have free rein. Both flood militant Sunnis opposed to the monarchy and sympathetic to Hamas with cash and weaponry. As Palestinians prepare for their 88-year-old chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ death, Iran seeks to hijack transition.
Abdullah II recognizes the tenuousness of his rule. While Israel has long helped Abdullah II and his father Hussein neutralize threats to the monarchy, Abdullah II’s rhetoric embrace of Hamas post-October 7 reflects his fear of the groups popularity on the Jordanian street. Rania’s advocacy for Hamas during recent conversations on Capitol Hill alarmed friends.
The tragedy of the Biden team’s obsessive focus on Netanyahu is they do not recognize that Israel is a bridgehead in a larger civilizational battle that they cannot afford to discard. For Hamas, Gaza is the first battle. The West Bank looms as its next ambition. Jordan, however, remains the big prize and for the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremists, it has never been more attainable.
