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 accomplice whose nation is a bulwark for safety within the Center East.
“You reside in a troublesome neighborhood,” Mr. Biden said as they sat within the Oval Workplace.
The king, who will meet with President Trump on Tuesday, might discover Washington to be the harder neighborhood this time round.
Mr. Trump has reiterated his intention to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as a part of his plan for the USA to “personal” the territory, and on Monday he suggested he might think about slashing assist to Jordan and Egypt if their governments refused to absorb an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians from Gaza.
Each Jordan and Egypt flatly rejected the thought when Mr. Trump first raised it final week, placing King Abdullah in a bind as he prepares to fulfill with the president.
Rebuffing Mr. Trump’s calls for might imperil the greater than $1.5 billion in international assist that Jordan receives annually from the USA. A separate, categorized 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 specialists say that the survival of his household’s rule will depend on his digging in in opposition to Mr. Trump’s plan.
“King Abdullah can’t associate with it,” stated Paul Salem, the vp for worldwide engagement on the Center East Institute in Washington. “He can’t survive the concept that 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 in opposition to any makes an attempt by Israel to annex half or the entire West Financial institution, which far-right members of Israel’s authorities converse overtly about and a few of Mr. Trump’s appointees have long advocated. The West Financial institution sits immediately on Jordan’s border, and an Israeli transfer to take extra Palestinian land might result in violence and unrest that might spill into Jordan.
Jordan is already residence to roughly 700,000 refugees, most of them Syrians who fled from that nation’s civil struggle.
In contrast to a few of its Center Jap neighbors which are drowning in oil wealth, Jordan is closely reliant on American assist. King Abdullah works exhausting to domesticate shut ties throughout the U.S. authorities, and makes it a degree to be the primary Arab chief to fulfill with each new president.
Jordan permits U.S. troops entry to its army bases, and for many years has obtained thousands and thousands of {dollars} from the C.I.A. to assist its intelligence providers — secret funds that started throughout the reign of the present king’s father, King Hussein.
American assist to Jordan, together with army assist, is presently frozen as a part of the Trump administration’s blanket halt to international help. The united statesA.I.D. workplace within the nation is being shuttered.
King Abdullah, who assumed the throne in 1999, is the longest presently 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 sturdy 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 nasty thought.”
The king met on Sunday with Pete Hegseth, the protection secretary, and Mr. Riedel says that Jordan “has lots of supporters on the Hill, together with lots of Republican supporters.”
Nonetheless, King Abdullah would possibly want to search out new patrons if Mr. Trump decides to chop funding to Jordan over its refusal to associate with his plan for Gaza. If this occurs, he would possibly discover keen 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 greatest objective within the Center East continues to be a grand deal that may contain Saudi Arabia’s formally recognizing Israel, one thing it might be extraordinarily unlikely to conform to if Mr. Trump follows by way of on his plans for Gaza.
The Saudi authorities has stated that there should be concrete steps towards an unbiased Palestinian state earlier than the dominion considers normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Because of this, King Abdullah might have a little bit of leverage. He might 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.
