Vital Interests:  Bruce, thanks for joining us today on the Vital Interests forum. It's going to be interesting to discuss your new book Jordan and America: An Enduring Friendship. The narrative of the modern states in what we know as the Middle East starts in the post-World War I period and the breakup of the Ottoman and the Austrian-Hungarian empires. Why don't we start there? Can you give us an overview of how the state of Jordan emerged at this time? 

Bruce Riedel: The breakup of the Ottoman Empire was in part due to the so-called Arab Revolt, which was the decision by the then head of the Hashemite family in Mecca, the Emir of the Hejaz, located in the western most part of the Arabian Peninsula, to break with the Ottoman Empire. He then  called for the creation of an independent Arab state. This is the foundational story of the Hashemites. It is crucial to their sense of legitimacy, that they were the first Arab nationalists. Of course what they had in mind was a kingdom that would be ruled by the Hashemite family, the direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. It didn't turn out that way.

The Hashemites lost control of the Arabian Peninsula to the Saudis. They did get the Kingdom of Iraq and as an afterthought, Winston Churchill, 100 years ago in 1921, gave Jordan to the brother of the ruler of Iraq, Abdullah I. The territory that constituted was called by the British then "a vacant lot". An appropriate term because Jordan, the lands east of the Jordan River, was basically, an unpopulated desert. There were very few towns, there was very little agriculture, there was and still is very little water. There are some ancient ruins from the past, most notably of course, Petra, but not much else. On this little piece of vacant lot, the Amir, as he was called, Abdullah I, began the story of Jordan.

VI: To put Jordan in a geographical perspective, it is a small country but surrounded by rather intimidating neighbors - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Israel - a tough neighborhood as President Biden recently remarked.

Bruce Riedel: Jordan lives in a tough neighborhood but as any real estate agent will tell you, it's location, location, location. It is surrounded by larger neighbors but what makes Jordan so important is that if Jordan is unstable then that will bleed out into the neighborhood, into Syria, into Iraq, across the Jordan River into Israel and the West Bank. The stability of Jordan is for the United States a core interest in trying to keep the Middle East a stable and functioning part of the world.

VI: Bruce, before we go into the history of Jordan, can you tell us a bit more about the legitimacy of the Hashemite family. Were they a Bedouin tribe - a nomadic group in the Arabian Peninsula similar to the Saudis? Are the Saudis traditional rivals of the Hashemites?

Bruce Riedel: The Saudis are very much a rival group, but the Hashemites were very much a city-oriented group. They were based in The Holy City of Mecca. Their roots come from Mecca, they've been there for over 1,000 years, dating back to the Prophet Muhammad and it was that claim to fame as the protectors of the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, which gave their challenge to the Ottomans in the First World War so much potency. This was not some obscure family that no one had ever heard about. These were the people who were the protectors of literally the first and second most important cities in the entire world of Islam. They are from the family of Hashim and the tribe of the Quraysh, which is the family and tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.

VI: During World War I the Heshemites allied themselves with the British and T.E. Lawrence was part of the postwar scene of playing off one Arab group against another. Can you describe British control and influence in the region?

Bruce Riedel: The flipside of the legitimacy of being the first proponents of an Arab nation, is their alliance with the British. If being the first Arab nationalist is a legitimizing role, then becoming an ally of the British undercut that legitimacy because they were allying  themselves with a Western Christian foreign power. T.E. Lawrence was very much part of the Arab Revolt. But Lawrence and Abdullah didn't get along well together. They always were just different personalities. T.E. Lawrence was part of the British decision to create the Emirate out of what was then called Transjordan. He was a participant in that, and despite his lack of enthusiasm for Abdullah, he was supportive of it when Winston Churchill created the state in 1921.

VI: At that time, the French were involved in the Middle East as well. The French got Lebanon and Syria and the British got Jordan, Palestine, and Iraq. Is that what the deal was?

Bruce Riedel: Indeed it was. Instead of an independent Arab nation as the Western Powers had appeared to promise the Hashemites, they got a carved-up Middle East with the French getting Syria and Lebanon and the British basically getting everything else that was left - Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and of course, they already had Egypt and the small Gulf states.

VI: Then after the Second World War, there was a move toward independence in these countries and Transjordan gained its independence in 1946. What was Britain’s continued influence in Jordan?

Bruce Riedel: Yes. Jordan became independent. Although, it remained highly dependent on the British for the next decade. British soldiers were the commanders of the Jordanian Army, British financial assistance kept the Jordanian economy going. In many ways, Jordan transitioned from being a colony of the British to being a dependency of the British, which continued well into the 1950s. As late as 1958, British paratroopers came into Jordan in order to help then King Hussein hold onto power.

VI: You tell the story of Sir John Glubb, who seemed to be the head of the Jordanian army, the security service, and the conduit for British funds coming into Jordan.

Bruce Riedel: In many ways, Glubb Pasha as he was called, was the de facto ruler of the country, which created tremendous resentment for young King Hussein. Glubb Pasha was at this point well into his 50s, and here was a young king who came to throne at the age of 17, who resented having a foreigner and an older man, essentially, running his kingdom. Famously, in Hussein’s first big political decision, he ordered Glubb Pasha to leave the country and gave him two hours to do so.

It was not one of the most chivalrous moments in King Hussein's life. He later relented and said, "You could go the next day," but even that meant that the British general and his family had very little time to pack up their belongings and leave a country that they'd lived in for over 30 years. Glubb never returned again to Jordan.

VI: Speaking of life experiences, this story of Jordan that you're telling is also your own story. You first arrived in the Middle East at age two because your father worked for the UN. Can you tell us a bit about your experience growing up in the Middle East.

Bruce Riedel: As you said, my father was with the United Nations. He was part of the Truce Supervisory Organization that looked over the ceasefire lines between Israel and Jordan after the 1948 war, which had created Israel. We moved to what is now referred to as East Jerusalem in 1955, living first at the YMCA, which is directly opposite the King David hotel, for people who've visited Jerusalem. Then moving to a small house in the neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, which has been in the news a lot recently. We stayed there for several years and then moved in 1957 to Beirut, which at the time was regarded as the "Paris" of the Middle East.

Unfortunately, a year later, the "Paris" of the Middle East descended into civil war. My mother and I were evacuated to Naples, Italy for a couple of months. When the civil war ended, we returned and in late 1960, we came back to the United States. Since then, I went on to serve in the Central Intelligence Agency, with tours in the Pentagon and at the White House with the National Security Council and had frequent dealings with first King Hussein and then King Abdullah II.

VI: You discuss a number of conflicts between Israel and Arab states that had a major impact on Jordan. The 1956 Israeli-Arab War - the Suez Crisis - was a pivotal event for Israel and Jordan. Can you give us a description of what happened?

Bruce Riedel: The 1956 war was an elaborate conspiracy. People generally disregard conspiracy theories, but in 1956, there really was a conspiracy. The British, the French, and the Israelis came up with a plot where Britain and France would take advantage of an Israeli attack on Egypt to launch their own attack on the Suez Canal, with the idea of taking the Suez Canal back from Egypt. Egypt had just nationalized. The hope was to topple the leader, the charismatic leader of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The conspirators deliberately decided not to tell America and specifically, President Dwight Eisenhower, what they were doing. He was furious when the plot was uncovered right at the time of his reelection in November 1956. and the Russians were crushing a democracy movement in Hungary. Eisenhower forced the Israelis, French and British to withdraw their troops and created a UN peacekeeping force in the Sinai to separate Egypt and Israel.

It really was the end of Britain as an Imperial power and the only time in American history that the United States has put significant pressure on Israel to withdraw from territory it had taken from an Arab state.

VI: What happened in East Jerusalem and the West Bank? Did Israel move into that territory and occupy it?

Bruce Riedel: Israel very much wanted control of the West Bank, literally, from the time of the  end of the 1948 war and made very little secret of this. One of the great British concerns in the 1956 war was that if they didn't focus Israel's attention on Egypt, it would instead be focused on Jordan, and Jordan would be literally carved up by Israel and maybe some of its other neighbors. King Hussein, of course, made the calamitous decision in June 1967 to align himself with Nasser against the Israelis and ended up losing the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six-Day war. It wasn't even a Six-Day war for Jordan. It was a three-day war.

VI: The result of Eisenhower being blindsided by his supposed allies drew his attention to the Middle East. He addressed Congress in January of 1957 and for the first time articulated that the Middle East was of vital interest to the United States. He created the Eisenhower Doctrine which provided financial, diplomatic and military support to the Middle East because of the oil and gas resources, but also because he recognized the Middle East as the center of the great Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Eisenhower felt it would be a tragedy for the civilized world that this region would fall to godless, atheist Communists. What impact did the Eisenhower Doctrine have?

Bruce Riedel: Eisenhower was living in the depths of the Cold War, the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union that dominated world politics from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. He was the first American president to articulate the notion that the Middle East was a part of the world that was vital to the success of the Free World, as we called ourselves at the time, in the struggle against communism. It's very interesting that as you suggested, Eisenhower laid out two reasons why it was important for the United States to be engaged in the Middle East.

The obvious one, oil, has been critical to American thinking about the Middle East for more than a half a century, going back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The second, that it was the home of the three great monotheistic religions. What's interesting is that in Eisenhower's 1957 address, he did not make the security of the State of Israel a vital American interest.

That makes him very much an outlier among American presidents, and very much reflects his antipathy for Israel after the 1956 war, and the conspiracy against Egypt, which he was very willfully excluded from by not just the Israelis, but by the English and the French as well.

VI: You write that while Eisenhower, and I'm sure the Pentagon and the CIA, thought the greatest threat to the Middle East was Soviet influence, in fact the real threat was Nasser and the pan-Arabism that was being promoted by Egypt at this time. Can you explain how that threat played out?

Bruce Riedel: The very idea that the Hashemites had championed in the First World War, the notion of Arab nationalism, of someday creating a single Arab nation from, as they say, the ocean to the sea, that is from Morocco to Oman, was championed much more effectively by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and '60s.

Nasser was an extremely charismatic figure, a moving speaker, a man who had defied the British, the French and the Israelis in 1956. He turned to the Soviets for arms because the West wouldn't sell him offensive weapons.. He was never a communist by any means but he was increasingly a de facto ally of the Soviet Union in the region. 

King Hussein had quite a tortured relationship with Nasser. When Nasser first came to power, the very young Jordanian king, whose first wife was Egyptian, was in many ways a supporter of Nasser's Arab nationalism. But when Nasser began calling for the overthrow of monarchies in the region, Hussein became the target of Nasser's plots. There were numerous attempts by Nasser and his allies to not only overthrow the king, but to assassinate him.

The United States, in particular the CIA, provided Hussein with advanced warning of several of these plots, including one in 1958, which came very close to killing him. Then, in the mid-1960s, as tensions escalated between Egypt and Israel, ultimately leading to the Six-Day War, Hussein threw his luck in with Nasser, famously going to Cairo just days before the war began and putting the Jordanian army under the control of an Egyptian general. That was a disastrous decision, but it did earn Hussein the loyalty and friendship of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

When Jordan had its own Civil War in 1970 between the Jordanian Hashemite monarchy and the army on the one side and the Palestinian Fedayeen or freedom fighters on the other, led by Yasser Arafat, Nasser was a very important intermediary. Nasser arranged a ceasefire that highly benefited Hussein and the Jordanian army and ultimately led to the defeat of the Palestinians. In reality this was the last serious bit of instability in Jordan for the next 50 years. In 1970 Jordan went through a very cathartic civil war but since then, it has been one of the most stable places in the entire Middle East.

VI: It seems that 1958 was a significant year with Nasser announcing a merger between Egypt and Syria which was labeled the United Arab Republic. In response, Jordan and Iraq announced a Hashemite bloc, the Arab Union. This led to increased tensions that spread to Lebanon and threatened Israel. To counter this, the United States for the first time used force in the Middle East when troops landed in Beirut. How did those tensions develop?

Bruce Riedel: The creation of the United Arab Republic, between Egypt and Syria in 1958, led the two Hashemite kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan, to create their own union. That collapsed in July 1958 when there was a coup d'état in Baghdad, and the entire Iraqi wing of the Hashemite family was brutally murdered.

King Hussein wanted to send the Jordanian army to put the Hashemites back in charge but he quickly realized that it was too late, that Iraq had now fallen into the hands of revolutionaries. Many assumed that the revolution in Baghdad was an Egyptian-inspired coup d'état. In fact, the Egyptians had nothing to do with it, but in the wave of panic that swept through Washington, the United States decided to intervene in Lebanon. Eisenhower may have been panicked, but he was smart enough to know that invading Iraq and marching on Baghdad would be a horrendous strategic mistake, bogging the United States down in a quagmire.

Whereas invading Beirut, Lebanon, which is a port on the Mediterranean Sea, was relatively easy to do without the challenges of taking on a big country like Iraq. In some ways, the American incursion in Lebanon in 1958 was more of a symbol that America had military power than a desire for a costly long-term intervention. The United States invaded in July, 1958 and was out by November.

VI: Middle East tensions continue to increase and lead to the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. What impact did this brief war have on Jordan?

Bruce Riedel: By 1967, Nasser was bogged down in his own quagmire. He had intervened in Yemen in 1962 when there was a coup d'état against the Yemeni monarchy. Egypt had 70,000 soldiers in Yemen, with no hope of a resolution. It was really Egypt's Vietnam. In order to try to change the narrative, Nasser, in May 1967, demanded the removal of the UN peacekeepers that had been put into the Sinai after the 1956 war.

He probably didn't think this through very carefully, because once those peacekeepers were gone, there was no reason for Israel not to go back to doing what it had done in '56 and invade Sinai and the Gaza Strip. King Hussein, in a moment of impetuosity, flew to Cairo, aligned himself with Nasser, and on the 5th of June 1967, joined in the war after Israel had launched a preemptive air attack on Egypt. The result of which was a disaster and humiliation for the Arabs.

The West Bank and Jerusalem were lost. Those were the main tourist attractions and an important source of revenue for the Jordanian economy. Jordan also lost control of vital agriculture areas in the West Bank. The Jordanian military, of course, had been completely crushed. The Jordanian Air Force ceased to exist after the June war. Literally, there was not a plane left in the Jordanian Air Force.

To add to the large number of displaced Palestinians already in Jordan, several hundred thousands more fled across the Jordan River. The Palestinian movement became a state within a state in Jordan, and by 1970, was threatening to overthrow King Hussein. The more radical parts of the Palestinian movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, attempted to assassinate the king on several occasions. It all came to a head in September 1970, when the PFLP simultaneously hijacked five international airliners, sending one to Cairo, where it was blown up on the tarmac, fortunately after the passengers had been evacuated. The four other hijacked planes landed at a remote desert airfield in Jordan, where the passengers were held as hostages. The PFLP and their Iraqi backers demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel.

That led to the bloody showdown that was the Jordanian Civil War, known as Black September, where the king ultimately emerged victorious. Since the end of 1970, Jordan has been a very stable country, with an occasional terrorist attack, but much more stable than any of its neighbors. Certainly more stable than Syria or Iraq, or Israel, given the two Intifada that have gone on in Israel since the 1980s. Jordan has become the rock of stability in the Middle East.

VI: This is largely due to support from the United States?

Bruce Riedel: Yes, support from the United States has been crucial. Both King Hussein and his son Abdullah courted the United States. They've always faced the reality that for America, there are two other Middle East countries that are far more important, Israel and Saudi Arabia. But the Jordanians have played a weak hand very well and have successfully courted American presidents from Eisenhower to Biden.

VI: As a result of the '67 War, Israel took control of Jerusalem and occupied the West Bank. Jerusalem is a big issue for the Hashemites as they consider themselves the protectors of the holy sites in Jerusalem.  Any negotiation with the Israelis to this day revolves around some Jordanian participation in the holy sites within Jerusalem.

Then you have the West Bank, which some Israelis insist on calling Judea and Samaria, traditional lands of the Jews for which the Jordanians have no claim. You quote Menachem Begin saying that there are two sides of the Jordan River, one is ours, and so is the other. There was a movement in Israel which advocated taking over Jordan, getting rid of the Hashemite king, and making Jordan a Palestinian state. That's their two-state solution.

Bruce Riedel: Yes, and that is the nightmare of the Hashemites. The Hashemites, of course, lost Mecca and Medina to the Saudis, and then lost Jerusalem to the Israelis but they have clung on to the position of being the protectors of the holy sites in Jerusalem, both Muslim and Christian. That right is enshrined in the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty and although not all Israelis like it, every Israeli government has recognized that the Jordanians do play a unique and special role in Jerusalem.

This is one of the sources of the legitimacy of the Hashemites, that they can claim to be the defenders of the holy sites and the protectors, to this day, of those sites. This causes friction with the Israelis from time to time but every Israeli government, since Itzhak Rabin has adhered to the treaty.

VI: Speaking of treaties, there was the 1978 Camp David meeting between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat that resulted in a peace settlement between Egypt and Israel. King Hussein was left out of the whole process. Can you describe how that took place?

Bruce Riedel: Jimmy Carter very much wanted to be a peacemaker in the Middle East, for many reasons, including his own deep faith as a Christian. He tried to orchestrate a multinational conference in Geneva that never got off the ground. He ended up hosting the Camp David summit between Sadat and Begin, which basically resulted in a deal between Egypt and Israel, in which Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt, and which Egypt got vague Israeli promises about some autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. Hussein was not invited to Camp David. He was summoned literally, by the Americans after the summit to become the negotiator on behalf of the Palestinians and he rejected that role. He could see, I think pretty clearly, that Begin had no intention of giving up what he called Judea and Samaria, and he did not want to be the agent by which Israel took control of the West Bank.

This led to tension in the relationship between the United States and Jordan but in the end, the Carter administration kept to the Egyptian-Israeli agreement. There was very vague support for autonomy talks between Israel and Egypt, but they never went anywhere and essentially collapsed by the end of the Carter administration.

VI: In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s a number of significant events took place in the region. The Shah of Iran was ousted and the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran was established. The American embassy was taken over and the resulting hostage crisis helped bring an end to the Carter administration. Then Iraq invaded Iran starting the eight year Iran-Iraq War. This is a bloody and bitter conflict we  don't think much about because the US was not directly involved.  For Jordan, especially King Hussein, wasn’t this war a pivotal event?

Bruce Riedel: The Iran-Iraq war was the longest and most bloody conventional war in the world since the Korean War. Jordan was very much Iraq's logistical link to the outside world. The Jordanian port of Aqaba became the place where not just military equipment but all kinds of civilian goods were imported into Iraq. Literally, the highway from Aqaba through Amman to Baghdad was bumper-to-bumper, trucks carrying goods supporting the Iraq war effort.

Jordan was critical in that regard, the king made over three dozen visits to Baghdad during the war. King Hussein also facilitated the development of US-Iraqi relations in the war. It was the king who engineered the first trip of CIA experts to Baghdad to give the Iraqis intelligence about Iranian military movements and capabilities, which in the end, was critical to the survival of the Iraqi government and the defeat of the Iranians. The king became a staunch friend, I would say, and defender of Saddam Hussein. A role that would, of course, come back to haunt him in August 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

VI: This relationship between King Hussein and Saddam Hussein was interesting. Saddam was not part of the Hashemite tradition. What was the attraction? What did Hussein see in Saddam Hussein? 

Bruce Riedel: The king saw in Saddam the defender of the Arab world against Iranian revolution. Since the Iranian revolution was based on the notion that monarchies were inherently illegitimate. Saddam was not a monarch himself of course, but was the de facto defender of the monarchies, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Hussein’s enthusiasm for Saddam was not shared by many others. His brother, Crown Prince Hassan, thought it was a big mistake. There's reason to believe his wife, Queen Noor, agreed Saddam was unreliable and dangerous.

Ultimately, in August 1990, when the king backed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, at least partially, it led to a severe rapture in relations with the United States. There was a terrible meeting between the king and President George H. W. Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine in late summer of 1990. The United States didn't break diplomatic ties with Jordan but relations went into a deep, deep freeze.

VI: The Iraq invasion of Kuwait was a clear act of aggression. The United States, the UN, and the Western powers stood up for Kuwait and launched the Desert Shield operation. A contingent of 100,000 American troops were sent to Saudi Arabia and quickly drove Iraq out of Kuwait. Can you talk about the repercussions of this episode?

Bruce Riedel: The United States very much backed Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. There were very clear indications within 72 hours after the invasion of Kuwait that Saudi Arabia was next. The United States sent troops. King Hussein advocated a negotiated diplomatic solution, what he called an Arab solution to the problem. President Bush thought there was no negotiated solution to be had, that Kuwait had to be liberated and ultimately it was in operation Desert Storm.

The Bush administration, in the course of pursuing a coalition against Iraq and ultimately, the liberation of Kuwait, also promised the Arab States that once the war was over, the United States would turn to the question of Arab-Israeli negotiations and particularly, to the question of what to do with the occupied West Bank and Gaza. At that point, the Bush administration realized that whatever their hurt feelings about Iraq, Jordan was going to be absolutely essential to any negotiations about the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The king very wisely leveraged his role as Israel's neighbor, the country with the longest border with Israel, to get himself back in the good graces of the United States. First with President Bush, but even more so, with Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Bill Clinton became, in the end, the American president that I say most enjoyed working with and who did more for Jordan than any other American president.

VI: After all of this and the persistent tensions between Israel and Jordan, there was the Oslo peace process that took place between Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, but once again, excluded Jordan entirely. Can you explain how that came about?

Bruce Riedel: The Jordanians thought that both the Palestinians and the Israelis were their partners in a peace agreement, and then were rudely upset when Israelis and Palestinians agreed to the Oslo Process, but King Hussein immediately also recognized opportunity here. If the Palestinians were now engaged in negotiations with Israel, there was nothing holding him back anymore from negotiating his own peace treaty with Israel and that's exactly what he did. In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein concluded the Israel-Jordan peace agreement, which stands to this day as really the only tangible accomplishment out of all the efforts the United States put into Israel-Palestinian negotiations, from Camp David until this day. It has given Israel a peaceful border on its Eastern side.

Basically, combined with the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the accord with Jordan leaves Israel in a very favorable position. It really only has as enemies Syria, which is now bogged down in a civil war, and Iran, which is hundreds of miles distant from Israel. The treaty has also been good for Jordan because it has allowed Jordan to focus on its domestic situation and to enjoy the benefits of a very close relationship with the United States ever since the Clinton administration, with a hiatus during the Trump administration, but that hiatus is now over and Joe Biden is a longtime friend of Jordan.

VI: In 1999, King Hussein died of cancer and his son Abdullah became king at age of 37. Abdullah also had a good working relationship with the Clinton administration. Clinton helped Jordan get membership in the WTO, and a bilateral free trade agreement was negotiated. Things were going fine and then, of course, there was 9/11 and the American global war on terror, which included not only an American led war in Afghanistan but then the invasion and occupation of Iraq. How did King Hussein opposing the U.S. actions in Iraq, admittedly from the side lines, impact relations with the Bush administration?

Bruce Riedel: The Jordanians had been an early target of Al-Qaeda. The king and queen were the target of an assassination plot by Al-Qaeda in 1999. Once Al-Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11th, King Abdullah quickly came to the support of the U.S., like many, he thought that the war in Iraq was a terrible diversion from the war against Al-Qaeda, but he had learned a lesson from his father's support for Iraq in the 1990s, so he kept his criticism of United States largely to himself. He didn't publicly quarrel with the American decision to go into Iraq, but privately, he let anyone who was interested know that he thought it was a mistake. Still, he didn't push a public confrontation with the United States.

Once the Americans became bogged down in Iraq in 2004-05, King Abdullah tried very hard to legitimize the new Iraqi governments. He was really the only Arab leader who came to the defense of the new Shia-dominated governments in Iraq because he realized that whether you liked it or not, Shias are the majority in Iraq and if you wanted to have a stable Iraqi government, you needed to engage them. He did so. Iraq has always held a special place for the Hashemites. It is safe to say that the dream of reuniting Jordan and Iraq together lies deep in the heart of every Hashemite. However outlandish it may be, that idea is always there.

VI: During the Iraq War and the ensuing years of unrest, 100,000s of Iraqis fled into Jordan. Were they Iraqi Hashemites seeking refuge in Jordan?

Bruce Riedel: Many of them were Sunni Muslims who feared a Shia government. There were also Shia refugees. People just basically wanted to get away from the war and Amman was a friendly and open place. King Abdullah welcomed them, and agreed to try to do his best to give them support, much as he has done to Syrians since the beginning of the Syrian civil war 10 years earlier. Jordan is a country of refugees. Starting with the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948 and then again in 1967; the Palestinians who moved to Kuwait and who then fled from Kuwait in 1991, including Queen Rania; the Iraqis after 2003; and the Syrians after 2011. It's an enormous burden on the kingdom, but one which it has been willing to take care of because of a basic feeling that it's a responsibility to host refugees fleeing violence for one reason or another.

VI: What actually are the numbers of refugees in Jordan? If you take into account all those who have left Palestine at one time or another, then Iraqis and Syrians fleeing violence, this must be millions of displaced people. 

Bruce Riedel: Absolutely. The majority of Jordanian citizens are of Palestinian origin. Either refugees from '48 or '67 or the descendants of refugees from '48 or '67. Most of the Iraqi refugees from the early 2000s have now gone home, not all of them but most of them, and there's somewhere around a million Syrians who are now refugees in Jordan.

VI: Wasn't there some concern in the kingdom that the Jordanians, the original Jordanians, the Hashemites, would be overwhelmed. While some Palestinians have citizenship, didn't they stop or withdrew citizenship for other Palestinian refugees coming into Jordan?

Bruce Riedel: They certainly don't want another wave of refugees coming from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but all Palestinians in Jordan have been given Jordanian citizenship, which is unique. Palestinian refugees in every other Arab country are not given citizenship. In practical terms, this is very important because Palestinians in Jordan have a passport, which allows them to travel freely. If you are a refugee in Syria or Lebanon, you don't have a Syrian or a Lebanese passport. You have to get a document from the United Nations which is much more difficult to acquire, and frankly, won't be recognized in many countries, so you can't travel. The Jordanians from 1948 on have given Palestinians Jordanian citizenship, and as a result, not only Palestinians in Jordan, but many Palestinians still in the West Bank continue to use their Jordanian passports in order to travel.

VI: To bring this up into more current times, there were Al-Qaeda threats and attacks in Jordan and then there was the rapid advance of ISIS capturing neighboring territory in Syria and Iraq and staging attacks within Jordan. The Jordanians were crucial in assisting the United States in the fight against ISIS. Thousands of American air attacks on ISIS targets flew out of Jordanian air bases. The alleged ISIS caliphate has been dismantled and their fighters killed or imprisoned but the threat from ISIS and other radical groups persists. Is American military support still vital for Jordanian security?

Bruce Riedel: Very much so, and as a consequence of the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, for the first time Jordan has become a base for American military operations. Jordan had trained with the Americans ever since the 1950s, but the United States never had military bases in Jordan until quite recently, and today, there's about 5,000 American troops deployed in Jordan. It's likely that Jordan will get more, particularly, as the United States downsizes its military operations in the Persian Gulf, part of the pivot towards Asia.

Some of those troops will move to Jordan, where they're further away from Iranian missile bases, and in a very stable part of the Middle East, which has known occasional terrorist attacks, including from ISIS, but has largely avoided the kind of destabilizing terrorism that we've seen in Iraq or Syria, or Libya, or Yemen, over the last decade or so.

VI: Bruce, let's talk about another major destabilizing factor in the Middle East, which are religious tensions. Jordan is a Sunni Muslim nation but considered to be moderate compared to the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. There are other religious factions, primarily the Shia threat from Iran and from Iranian proxy forces - Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and to some extent the Houthi in Yemen. I think King Hussein was one of the first to start talking about the implications of an Iranian Shia Crescent in the Middle East. What are the realities of this religious component?

Bruce Riedel: The Hashemite family is very much a Sunni religious orientation, but both Hussein and Abdullah have also seen themselves as leaders of the Islamic world in general, including the Shias. So they aspire to rise above Sunni/Shia differences. While the king did honor the phrase, Shia Crescent, he has generally avoided the kind of harsh sectarian rhetoric that you've heard out of, say, the Saudis or out of Iran. King Abdullah has been to Iran, which is very unusual for an Arab leader. He seeks to downplay that, arguing that sectarianism only makes the situation in the Middle East worse, a point of which I think he's quite right.

VI: With the Biden administration there are new possibilities to reduce Middle East tensions. The legacies of the Trump administration - moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, de facto support for an increase of settlements in the West Bank, and the questionable Abraham Accords will continue to impact Jordan. At the beginning of last summer there was a coup attempt that threatened the stability of King Abdullah’s regime. Can you explain why you think this was the most serious threat to the kingdom since the Black September attacks in 1970?

Bruce Riedel: Absolutely. The conspiracy that was unveiled and foiled last spring, enjoyed the support of the Saudis. A reversion back to the tensions of the 1920s, if you like. President Biden came quickly to the defense of Jordan, phoned the king and publicly supported him. It didn't hurt that the director of the CIA today is Bill Burns, former ambassador to Jordan, the ambassador when King Hussein passed away, and King Abdullah ascended to the throne.

Jordan has advocates in the inner circle of the Biden administration, and Joe Biden, who was very much the Iraq point-person in the Obama administration, has been to Jordan many times on his way to Baghdad, and back. I would say the relationship between Jordan and the United States today is probably as strong as it has ever been.

VI: In terms of the governing power within Jordan itself, it is a kingdom and the king has considerable power, but there is a parliament where tribal leaders exercise some influence. When this plot was disclosed it seems that Prince Hamzah, a half brother of the king, was courting the tribal leaders citing corruption and misrule. What role do the tribes play in Jordan?

Bruce Riedel: The core of the monarchy's support is the East Bank Bedouin tribes, which have supported the Hashemites since 1921. If you look at the Jordanian Intelligence Service, for example, it is almost entirely composed of East Bankers. There are very few Palestinians in the Jordanian Intelligence. Some, but not many. This is the core bedrock of support for the Hashemites. It was of concern to Abdullah earlier this year, when there was talk among some of these groups about corruption and the need for change.

Hamzah is an obvious alternative. He is the son of King Hussein and his last wife, Queen Noor. He looks very much like Hussein. I think that that conspiracy has now been effectively foiled. There are reasons to be concerned about the stability of Jordan, the economy being at the top of the list, and corruption, but there's no reason to panic. The king has the support of the Intelligence Service and the army and without defections from the army, it's hard to see how any rival could displace him.

VI: Bruce, we're coming to the end of our time. Thanks for this interesting conversation. We've certainly learned a lot more about Jordan - the threats it has endured and the importance of its role in the region. Certainly, in a neighborhood where you have states like Syria and Yemen which have been torn apart by bitter civil wars, Lebanon now descending into financial and government chaos, an Iraq where ISIS remains active and Iranian backed militias exercise considerable control, and the tinderbox of Palestinian/Israeli is constant threat, the support for the stability of Jordan, as President Eisenhower so rightly saw many years ago, is in the vital interest of the United States.

Bruce Riedel: Absolutely. Jordan is a success story, which is a rare thing in the Middle East these days. Part of the reason for that success is American support. I think the relationship deserves careful attention and support and I'm confident that it is as strong as it has ever been today.

Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, part of the Brookings Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. In addition, Riedel serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy. He retired in 2006 after 30 years of service at the Central Intelligence Agency, including postings overseas. He was a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to four presidents of the United States in the staff of the National Security Council at the White House. He was also deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Near East and South Asia at the Pentagon and a senior advisor at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels.

Riedel was a member of President Bill Clinton’s peace process team and negotiated at Camp David and other Arab-Israeli summits and he organized Clinton’s trip to India in 2000. In January 2009, President Barack Obama asked him to chair a review of American policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, the results of which the president announced in a speech on March 27, 2009.