Increased Cooperation With U.S. Has Put Jordan in Iran’s Cross Hairs

Iran has been increasingly targeting Jordan with attacks like the one on Friday that killed two U.S. servicemen. The reason, analysts said, is because Jordan has been playing a more central role in U.S. military operations against Iran.

The U.S. and Jordan have long cooperated on military, intelligence and counterterrorism and Jordan hosts major U.S. air bases. U.S. officials say Washington increasingly relied on Jordan in the run-up to and the early days of the war against Iran, as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from the Gulf Arab nations of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to relatively more secure locations in Jordan and neighboring Israel.

Jordan’s role grew as other American allies in the region restricted Washington’s ability to base troops in and fly aircraft over their territories, the U.S. officials said.

But unlike the resource-rich Gulf-nations, Jordan relies heavily on the U.S. for foreign aid and is not in a strong position to deny Washington’s wishes.

Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based think tank focused on the Middle East, said on Sunday that he imagined Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia “are now even more hesitant to let the U.S. broadly use their bases to attack Iran,” after Iran retaliated against them. “But Jordan, because of its security agreement with the U.S. and the very one-sided, dominant relationship Washington has with Jordan, would not be in a position to say no.”

On Sunday, Jordan evacuated the international airport and seaport in the coastal city of Aqaba after a “specific and credible threat,” the U.S. embassy there said. The country’s air defenses later shot down three Iranian missiles that targeted the country, the Jordanian military said, while a fourth landed in an unpopulated area.