AMMAN: Jordan’s request for Patriot air defence systems from Washington reflects its growing concern about being caught in the crossfire if the war in Gaza pulls in Iran and its well-armed regional on the kingdom’s borders.
Jordan neighbours Syria and Iraq - both states where Iranian proxies operate - and also sits next door to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It has watched Israel’s war against the Palestinian group Hamas, another Iranian ally, with rising alarm.
King Abdullah has spoken bluntly about his fears that the conflict could cause trigger a new displacement of Palestinians to the kingdom, already home to a large population of Palestinians dispossessed from their land when Israel was created in 1948.
But former senior Jordanian officials and a security source told Reuters that Jordan was now appealing for more advanced US defence hardware and support because of worries Iran and its proxies could become embroiled more deeply in any wider Middle East conflagration.
“Jordan needs these weapons to protect itself, but it is also in the US interest, and it is a key deterrence to the Iranians,” said Mamoun Abu Nuwar, a former Jordanian air force general.
“With the presence of these unruly, uncontrolled, let’s say that if they start striking Israel in a widening conflict, we would be caught in the middle,” he said.
A Jordanian army spokesperson said on Sunday that Amman had requested that US Patriot missiles be deployed in Jordan.
Washington last stationed the air defence system in Jordan in 2013 when an escalating conflict in Syria had also raised fears of a regional flare-up that could threaten the country, one of Washington’s most loyal Middle East allies.
Jordan’s announcement of the Patriot request comes as Amman has been deepening its defence ties with Washington. It already has a list of US equipment on order for its military, including 12 US-built F-16 warplanes.
“I expect we will see a much more accelerated response to longstanding requests for a whole inventory of munitions and equipment that had been relatively slow to be delivered,” said a security official in Jordan, who declined to be named.
A spokesperson for the US Embassy in Amman did not have more details about the Patriot request. They said Washington was working with F-16’s manufacturer on delivering the plane order and said US military assistance to Jordan was worth more than $600 million a year.
The US military said on Oct. 21 it would send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and Patriots to the Middle East - without saying precisely where they would be located - in response to attacks on US troops in the region.