Jordan is fighting Iran and the Brotherhood and Washington should take notice – opinion

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened a “crushing response” unless the Americans left, but the Americans are still there.

By Gregg Roman, Middle East Forum

On November 2, 2026, King Abdullah II opened Jordan’s parliament ten days after gunmen killed nine mourners and wounded 34 at a funeral in St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church in Hamoud, a village in Karak governorate.

The king called the killers “khawarej,” the old name for those who put themselves outside the faith, and told lawmakers they have no place in Jordan, “not now, not ever.”

Three suspects have since been charged with terrorism. It closed a hard year for the kingdom.

Since 2025, no Arab state has done more against the two forces that threaten American interests in the Levant: the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Washington has noticed mostly in its appropriations bills. It should notice in its strategy.

Since the war began on February 28, Iran has treated Jordan as an enemy. In the first five weeks alone, it fired 161 missiles and 120 drones at targets inside the kingdom.

Jordan’s air force and air defenses brought down 261 of the 281. Between July 9 and July 25, they downed another 70 ballistic missiles and 25 drones.

On September 9, they intercepted 18 of 20.

Jordan hosts about 4,000 American troops, and Iran’s fire has fallen on them, too. In July, three U.S. soldiers were killed in Iranian strikes on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.

In September, another strike there damaged an A-10 and about eight F-15s.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ answer was an ultimatum: Expel the Americans or face a “crushing response.” The Americans are still there.

Geography explains the stakes. Jordan’s eastern desert borders Iraq, where smuggling routes across the Jazira and Badia are dominated by Iran-aligned militias, a Konrad Adenauer Stiftung study found in October.

Its northern border with Syria was for years a main gate for Captagon and guns moving south. Its western border runs along Israel and Judea and Samaria.

A Jordan that falters would hand Tehran a corridor from Baghdad to the Jordan River.

Iran’s designs on Jordan predate the war. In March 2024, Jordanian security arrested members of a Brotherhood cell tied to Hamas’s military wing that had received weapons from Iranian-backed militias in Syria, Reuters reported.

The target was the monarchy itself. That is the point Washington keeps missing. In Jordan, Tehran and the Brotherhood are not two files. They are one.

On April 15, 2025, Jordan announced the arrest of 16 Brotherhood members, trained and financed in Lebanon, who had set up a rocket and drone factory.

One rocket was ready to launch. Eight days later, the government outlawed the movement and seized its offices and assets.

Then it followed the money. In July 2025, investigators reported that the Brotherhood had raised more than 30 million dinars, about $42 million, much of it in donations collected for Gaza.

Only about 1 percent reached Jordan’s official relief channels. The rest, prosecutors said, paid for politicians, election campaigns, and property abroad.

On October 25, a Jordanian court sentenced seven Brotherhood leaders, including former general supervisor Murad al-Adaileh. Five, among them finance chief Ahmad al-Zarqan, received three years.

Washington followed Amman, not the reverse.

On January 13, 2026, the Treasury designated the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for its material support to Hamas, citing the rocket, explosives, and drone cases Jordan had already brought.

The job is unfinished. The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Islamic Action Front, won 31 of 138 seats in 2024.

It survives as the Umma Party after the election commission ordered it to drop a name that broke the ban on religious parties, and in September it elected Muath al-Khawaldeh, a longtime Brotherhood spokesman, as its leader.

Charities tied to the movement still operate.

Congress has been generous. The 2022 memorandum of understanding commits Washington to seek $1.45 billion a year through 2029.

Congress appropriated a record $2.1 billion for fiscal 2026, and the House-passed bill for 2027 matches it.

When Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) moved in July to cut Jordan off entirely, the House rejected him 421 to six.

Money is not strategy. The Treasury designated the Brotherhood as an organization but not the people and charities that move its money.

The House defense bill’s $500 million for Jordan’s armed forces is still not law.

And as Qatar mediates a U.S.-Iran deal built around uranium and the Strait of Hormuz, the country that absorbed hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones has no seat at the table.

Three things must follow. First, Congress should enact the 2027 figures, including up to $500 million for Jordan’s armed forces and not less than $150 million for its border security.

The administration should open talks on a successor memorandum with air and missile defense at its center.

Jordan’s interceptors protected American troops this year. Paying for more of them is not charity.

Second, the Treasury should finish what it began in January.

It should name the Jordanian Brotherhood’s financiers and front charities, using the evidence Jordanian prosecutors have already put before a court, and freeze what they hold in American reach.

Third, any agreement with Tehran should require an end to attacks on Jordan and to the smuggling of weapons across its borders by Iran and its militias.

Washington should also back the border coordination that Iraq, Jordan, and Syria began in August, with intelligence and surveillance the kingdom cannot buy alone.

A deal that quiets the Gulf while leaving Jordan exposed would only move the war.

Jordan has shot down Iran’s missiles, jailed the Brotherhood’s financiers, and kept American troops on its soil under fire.

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