The Middle East’s longest-reigning king heads into a standoff with Trump

The Hashemites of Jordan are survivors. With British backing, they clawed a little desert kingdom out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. Three decades later, they watched as their profligate cousins in Iraq were slaughtered in a coup. They were bested by Israel in the 1967 War and then clobbered Palestinian fighters a few years later.

Through it all, they stayed.

Therefore, when King Abdullah II meets US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, he can trumpet the fact that he is the longest-serving Arab ruler in the world, heading one of its oldest family dynasties. He wants to keep it that way.

Abdullah’s mission is clear. He will have to stand his ground to convince Trump that his impoverished, resource-poor kingdom will not accept Palestinian refugees so that the US can “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip into Jordan is the type of event that current and former US, European and Arab officials say would spell the death knell to Hashemite rule that he and his ancestors have so deftly avoided.

“There are sure to be second thoughts in Amman right now about the wisdom of rushing to Washington and having the king be the first Arab leader to tell Trump to his face “we aren’t going to do what you want’,” Bruce Reidel, a former CIA officer and the author of Jordan and America: An Enduring Friendship, told MEE.

Over half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian descent. They will not respond kindly to their government participating in what the international community and the vast majority of the Arab world would consider to be “ethnic cleansing”, analysts say.

Through fifteen months of Israel’s war on Gaza, Abdullah was able to preserve the 1994 Peace Treaty that his father, former King Hussein, struck with Israel.

But Trump’s call for Palestinians to be expelled to Jordan is so frightening that Amman will declare war on Israel if it happens, MEE first reported.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi confirmed the same on Thursday.

But analysts doubt whether the Jordanians can follow through on that threat.

Umbilical cord

Jordan is a key US ally. At least 3,000 US troops operate in the Hashemite Kingdom, which has a defence agreement with Washington that allows them “unimpeded access” to many Jordanian military facilities. Jordan’s intelligence services have long cooperated with Israel, managing the two’s cold peace.

Despite Trump’s penchant for royalty, Jordan is the kind of country he despises. Its economy is in shambles, it is resource-poor, and its trade with the US is minimal. Abdullah likes posing in military uniforms, but he lacks the swagger of other Middle Eastern rulers.

Israel and Egypt were exempted from Trump’s foreign aid cut, which included military financing, but Jordan was not. The kingdom receives about $1.45bn a year in military and economic aid from the US, including hundreds of millions of dollars in direct budget support and $350m in USAid funding.

Jordan’s other main backers, wealthy Gulf states, tightened the purse strings years ago.

The country’s dismal economic prospects threaten the Hashemites, who have historically relied on patronage and government jobs to buy support from Jordan’s East Bank tribes, so called because they were present on the east side of the Jordan River when the kingdom was founded.

Trump has said he expects Jordan to take in Palestinians in return for accepting US financial assistance.

“I said to him that I’d love you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess,” Trump said after a January phone call with Abdullah.

Amer Sabaileh, a regional security expert and university professor based in Amman, told MEE that Jordan’s king will have to string Trump along if he persists in the meeting.

“The worst thing now is to say ‘no’ to Trump,” Sabaileh said. “We need to make Jordan valuable in the eye of Trump. We need to improve the relationship with Israel and use the security card,” he said. “I am not optimistic.”

Some analysts have said that Trump’s stunning call for the US to take over the Gaza Strip could be a negotiating position to extract more from Arab partners. Jordan does not have money like Gulf states, but Reidel said the king could focus his conversation on the postwar governance of Gaza.

“It’s going to be a divisive meeting,” he said. “There is no reconciliation between Jordan’s position and Trump’s. They can’t split the difference,” he added. “And if Egypt buckles and takes in refugees, that sets a precedent for Jordan and the West Bank.”

“Jordan sees Israel moving towards the Jordan is Palestine option,” he said.

Tariq Tell, a professor at the American University of Beirut, who hails from one of Jordan’s most prominent political families, told MEE, either way, Abdullah might come up empty-handed. 

“Should we take the saber rattling seriously, given Jordan’s umbilical ties to the US? Surely it is all political posturing to cover up what is a long-term process of transfer, sometimes violent, usually soft, that has reversed the ratio of West Bankers to East Bankers in Jordan’s population,” he said. 

Palace intrigue

For now, Jordan benefits from having the support of Gulf states and Egypt.

Trump’s plan was shot down by Saudi Arabia, which rushed out a statement this week that rejected any efforts to displace Palestinians from their land. The kingdom also hardened its position from demanding Israel pursue a pathway to a Palestinian state to saying one must be created before it normalises diplomatic relations with Israel.

‘Trump wants one thing from the Middle East and one thing only: a Saudi-Israel normalisation deal’

– Merissa Khurma,Wilson Center

“Trump wants one thing from the Middle East and one thing only: a Saudi-Israel normalisation deal,” Merissa Khurma, director of the Middle East programme at the Wilson Center, told MEE.

But deep down, family feuds and palace intrigue undermine the display of solidarity.

In July 2021, an advisor to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Bassem Awadallah, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his role in an alleged plot to cultivate Abdullah’s younger brother, Prince Hamzeh, as a rival to the Hashemite Throne. Saudi Arabia denied involvement. Prince Hamzeh has been under house arrest.

MEE reported that Saudi Arabia tried to oust Abdullah over his refusal to accept Palestinian refugees from the occupied West Bank as part of a failed bid to normalise ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“King Abdullah has not forgotten that the Saudis were funding Hamzeh,” Reidel said. “Abdullah is much closer to the UAE now”.

Kushner returns?

Several well-placed Jordanians told MEE that King Abdullah is also distrustful of Trump’s inner circle.

The Jordanians had a brief show of unity from Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who is married to a Jordanian American and appeared on the floor of Congress in 2023 as a lawmaker wielding a Jordanian keffiyeh. But it is Trump’s family that scares them.

“The ideological direction of Trump’s Gaza plan is very much driven from within the family, from Jared,” a Jordanian source told MEE.  “It is clear they have been talking about it for months.”

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East advisor, floated a plan during the first Trump administration dubbed “The Deal of the Century.” It called for Israel to annex 30 percent of the West Bank and for a Palestinian pseudo-state to be created with no military. The plan tried to entice the Palestinian Authority by offering $50bn in economic aid, but it was rejected. 

Kushner called for Gaza to be turned into a real estate development and for Palestinians there to be “temporarily” displaced in February 2024.

Jordan’s resolute stance now is complicated by the fact that it has few good cards to play besides telling Trump that his plan could obliterate the kingdom and unleash the kind of chaos former White Houses sought to avoid.

Jordan’s royal family is secular and western-educated, but the biggest political party in the country is the Muslim Brotherhood. Its popularity soared as Jordanians watched Israel pummel Gaza with American weapons. The collapse of the Assad family in Syria means Jordan now has an Islamist government next door.

“It is not clear that Trump still prioritises Syria or cares about the Muslim Brotherhood. It is going to be a very delicate balance to explain how all of this resonates in Jordan,” Khurma told MEE.