Smuggling weapons “to target the monarchy” in Jordan.. Iran is in the crosshairs of accusations

When an official source revealed the thwarting of an attempt to smuggle weapons into Jordan last March, fingers were immediately pointed towards Iran and the militias it supports, although the official news published by the Jordanian News Agency, Petra, did not specify the country.

Reuters quoted two unnamed sources as saying that the foiled “plot” was “suspected that Iran was behind it” to “help opponents of the monarchy carry out acts of sabotage.”

The two sources told the agency that “the weapons were sent by factions in Syria supported by Iran to a cell affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, which has links to the military wing of the Hamas movement.”

The Petra news had indicated that investigations were ongoing and were linked to “weapons sent by militias supported by one of the countries to a cell in Jordan,” indicating that the members of this cell were Jordanian.

For weeks, fears have been growing of direct or indirect Iranian moves to fuel instability in the Kingdom, which announced that it would not be an “area for conflict” between Israel and Iran.

Targeting the monarchy

Jordanian political analysts who spoke to arab media reduced the targeting of “the Jordanian monarchy,” not believing in Iranian movements aimed at spreading confusion and destabilizing security in the Kingdom, which is an ally of the United States.

“It is an exaggeration to say that Iran is targeting the monarchy in Jordan, or that it is actually capable of doing so,” according to what the Jordanian writer and political analyst, Malek Al-Athamneh, confirms, pointing out the presence of “a hard-line wing in Iran that leads foreign operations.”

Al-Athamneh confirms to the media that Tehran is targeting “Jordan’s security, as spreading chaos serves its interests, coinciding with striking and repeated statements from Hamas to incite the Jordanian street for the purpose of relieving pressure on what it is exposed to in Gaza.”

He recalled statements from leaders of the Hamas movement a few weeks ago that included a call on the Jordanian people to march to the border with Israel, as Jordanian Islamic movements were accused at the time of fueling the protests, while some considered that those behind them were pro-Iranian groups that wanted to tamper with Jordan’s stability.

Al-Athamneh said, “We must not forget that Jordan is waging a real war that preceded the war on Gaza, on its northern and eastern borders, with Tehran’s agents in drug smuggling operations that target the entire Arab regional depth, and weapons smuggling, not to mention talk of human smuggling.”

News of the “conspiracy” and arrests, about which no reports had been received before, come amid severe tensions in the Middle East as a result of the war that Israel is waging in Gaza against the Hamas movement. Hamas is part of an anti-Israel axis led by Tehran and includes several factions allied with it, according to Reuters.

“Inconsistent with reality”

“Incorrect, reprehensible, and inconsistent with the truth,” with these words, the media spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Moaz Al-Khawaldeh, described what Reuters reported, according to sources, linking weapons smuggling from Iranian militias to a cell affiliated with the “Muslim Brotherhood.”

The Brotherhood is spread in several countries, and the group says that it does not call for violence, and that it has been operating legally in Jordan for decades.

Al-Khawaldeh explains in statements to arab media that the position of the Muslim Brotherhood is “unambiguous and clear, with our commitment to the security and stability of Jordan for decades,” and he is surprised by “their name being involved in this matter.”

He stressed that the Muslim Brotherhood “has no connection to Iran or its militias, and its position towards the Jordanian regime and the institution of the throne with the presence of the royal family is clear from the political thought document issued years ago,” indicating the existence of “a rational and wise relationship between them and the various Jordanian authorities.” He stressed that the group is “part of the social and political fabric in the Kingdom.”

A prominent representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan confirmed to Reuters that some members of the group were arrested in March and were in possession of weapons, but he said that whatever they did was not with the group’s approval, adding that he believed they were smuggling weapons to the West Bank and not with the aim of carrying out operations in Jordan. .

The group’s representative, who requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, also said: “There is a dialogue between the Brotherhood and the authorities. They (the authorities) know that if there are mistakes, they did not come from the Muslim Brotherhood, but rather from individuals only, and it is not from the Brotherhood’s policy.”

Another leader in the group, who requested anonymity, told the same agency that the cell members who were arrested were among those who were recruited by the deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri, who masterminded Hamas’ operations in the West Bank from his exile in Lebanon. Al-Arouri was killed in a drone strike in Beirut in January, an attack widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

Director of Iranian Studies, Alete Savioun, at the MEMRI Institute , said in an analysis published in early April that “Iran’s grand plan focuses on a direct goal of overthrowing the Jordanian regime, as soon as Tehran obtains the maximum benefit on the combat front through Hezbollah.”

She pointed out that “militias loyal to Tehran have welcomed, during the recent period, the escalation of pro-Palestinian protests in Jordan, and expressed their desire to open a new front against Israel from the Jordanian border.”

The timing of the announcement of the foiling of the plot

Petra news agency indicates that the cell was arrested and the plot was foiled, in late March, but it was not announced until mid-May, which raises questions about the timing of publishing the official news.

The Muslim Brotherhood spokesman expressed his astonishment at “the timing of publishing the news, which comes at a time when Gaza is experiencing an Israeli war, coinciding with the commemoration of the Nakba on May 15, which caused the displacement of the Palestinian people.”

On Wednesday, Palestinians commemorated the 1948 Nakba, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes in the war to establish the State of Israel, at a time when fighting raged amid the rubble in the Gaza Strip, according to Reuters.

This year’s anniversary is dominated by the tragedy of about two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, most of whom are currently living in temporary shelters after being displaced from their homes due to the Israeli war following the Hamas attack on settlements in its vicinity last October.

Al-Khawaldeh believes that choosing this timing has one meaning: an attempt to “shuffle the cards on the national scene, spread division within Jordan,” and an attempt to tamper with “the cohesive fabric of the Kingdom.”

Most of Jordan’s population, numbering 11 million, is of Palestinian origin, as Jordan received millions of Palestinian refugees fleeing their homeland in the turbulent years that followed the establishment of the State of Israel. The Gaza crisis has put the Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II, in a difficult position as he tries to reconcile support for the Palestinian cause with maintaining an old alliance with Washington and decades-long recognition of Israel, according to Reuters.

The Israeli invasion of Gaza sparked widespread public anger, and demonstrators call for severing ties with Israel, and street protests erupted last week.

For his part, the analyst Al-Athamneh believes that choosing such a timing does not constitute a “mystery or secret,” but rather comes within the framework of “choosing the most appropriate timing,” as he put it.

He explains: “The delay in the Jordanian response, or announcing such matters, is a normal thing in the Kingdom, by the security authorities who are not accustomed to directly announcing their specific operations, except after they have exhausted their investigations and achieved the information required of them.”

Al-Athamneh continues that he has “a conviction, based on leaks and information that I saw two years ago, that the Jordanian security services have a lot of hidden things, which the official agencies may deem wise to hide and sometimes employ in back channels for the benefit of the Kingdom.”

Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday: “The movement confirms that it has nothing to do with any actions targeting Jordan, and that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of countries, and that the movement’s policy is consistent and clear in limiting its confrontation with” Israel.

A “political” evocation of Iran

Two Jordanian sources asked Reuters not to reveal their identities. They refused to reveal the sabotage acts that were being planned and indicated that investigations are still ongoing.

They said that the plot was aimed at destabilizing Jordan, which could become a regional point of tension in the Gaza crisis, as it hosts an American military base and shares borders with Israel, as well as Syria and Iraq, where there are factions allied with Iran.

The two sources did not specify the weapons seized during the operation in March, but they said that in the past few months, the security services had thwarted a number of attempts by Iran and allied groups to smuggle weapons, including Claymore mines, C4 explosives, Semtex explosives, Kalashnikov rifles, and 107 mm Katyusha rockets.

They continued, “(In) June 2023, they began smuggling weapons, and they increased a lot. Among them were individual mines and explosives such as (such as) C4 and Glock pistols, and the last thing they smuggled was a 107 mm Katyusha.”

Iranian political analyst, Hussein Rorian, says that “the Iranian government did not comment on what was reported by news agencies,” noting that “arms smuggling is spreading in many countries, and jumping to the conclusion that Tehran is behind the matter is surprising.” He added that “bringing Iran there A politician par excellence.”

In response to media inquiries, he stated that accusations are often made that Iran is behind the smuggling of drugs or weapons across the Jordanian border, stressing that they are “political accusations that are baseless and unacceptable.”

Roryan said that he “does not want to deny that there may be weapons smuggling aimed at reaching the West Bank, as the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank cannot be overlooked.”

Rorian added, “It is surprising that countries that had hosted operations rooms to manage the crisis and war in Syria in previous years, and through which weapons were passed periodically, would now come and categorically accuse Iran of smuggling weapons to them.”

He downplayed accusations of an Iranian priority “to target the Jordanian monarchy, stressing that it is not among its goals or priorities, and any change to the Jordanian political system is not an Iranian matter.”

According to the Jordanian sources who spoke to Reuters, most of the clandestine flow of weapons into the kingdom was directed to neighboring Palestinian territories in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But they said some of the weapons, including those seized in March, were intended for use in Jordan by a Muslim Brotherhood cell allied with Hamas.

One of the sources, an official familiar with security matters, said, “The new danger is the entry of weapons. These weapons are placed in holes called dead spots, and they place them on the GPS, photograph them, and tell their men present to take them from there,” referring to the routes followed by the smugglers. In operations.

The “Jordanian model” and Tehran

Amer Al-Sabaila, a Jordanian academic and geopolitical analyst, says that since last March, the Jordanian arena has witnessed “attempts to escalate internally, as Tehran sought, through statements by militias loyal to it, to turn the Jordanian arena into a high-tension area.”

He added in a reply that there were many statements that were clear about targeting the Kingdom and “causing a clash inside Jordan,” which would serve the geopolitical goals of Iran, which has become in “open confrontation with Israel.”

In early April, Abu Ali Al-Askari, the security official in the Iranian-backed Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, said in a statement that “the resistance in Iraq has prepared its equipment to equip the Islamic resistance in Jordan to meet the weapons needs of 12,000 fighters.”

Al-Sabaila asserts that “the Jordanian model represents a challenge to Tehran, as it is the only one that is based on an existing system, with clear and unambiguous institutions and authorities, and whose stability cannot be tampered with.

Al-Sabaila did not rule out the presence of “limited infiltrations” among some individuals in the Kingdom through “exploiting the economic conditions to attract them to the pro-Tehran ideology, but it is certainly not linked to a central decision related to any of the Islamic groups in the Kingdom.”

Jordanian authorities believe that Iran and its allied groups, such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, are trying to recruit young extremists from the Muslim Brotherhood in the kingdom for anti-Israel and anti-American goals in an attempt to expand Tehran’s regional network of allied forces, the two sources told Reuters.

Over the past year, Jordan said it had thwarted many attempts by infiltrators linked to pro-Iranian groups in Syria, who the kingdom said crossed its borders with rocket launchers and explosives, and were able to bring in some weapons without being detected. Tehran denied being behind such attempts.

A diplomat close to Tehran told Reuters that Iran’s ambition to establish a foothold for an allied group in Jordan goes back to Qasem Soleimani, the commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who was assassinated by the United States, in 2020.

The diplomat added that given Jordan’s strong relations with the United States and the West, Soleimani believed that forming an allied group in Jordan capable of fighting Israel was crucial to expanding Tehran’s strategic influence in the region.

As the protests grow in Jordan, fears are raised about Iranian agents interfering and exploiting the demonstrations in order to establish a foothold in the Kingdom and push its instability to achieve Tehran’s own agendas.

A National Interest report said that “popular unrest against relations with Israel and a turbulent economy” make Jordan vulnerable to “the malignant activities of Iran and ISIS” and that “large-scale protests in Jordan” put “the kingdom’s status as a bastion of security and stability in the region to the test.”

The hostility between Iran and Jordan dates back to 2004 after the US-led invasion of Iraq when King Abdullah accused Tehran of trying to form a “Shiite crescent” to expand its influence in the region.

King Abdullah defended the decision to shoot down the drones last April, saying that it was self-defense and not for the benefit of Israel, and stressed that his country would not be a battlefield for any party.