As Jordanian air defences engaged Iranian missiles over its skies, and America began to count its dead, Jordan offered something more forceful than mere condemnation. It signed a strategic trade agreement with Washington, reaffirming the depth of Jordan–US ties and Amman’s centrality in an American-led world order.
Jordan would have much preferred to stay out of the line of fire in the renewed confrontation between America and Iran. The resource-poor, middle-income monarchy, with an estimated population of 12 million, is the last country in the Middle East to take its domestic stability for granted, having spent decades insulating itself from the tumult next door — the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Syria’s civil war and the sectarian strife of post-Saddam Iraq. King Abdullah II understands, better than most Arab rulers, that one reckless foreign-policy move or domestic miscalculation can unleash the kind of unrest that cost several fellow monarchs and presidents their rule during the Arab Spring of 2011 and subsequent upheavals.
Amman had no such luck this time. Over the past two weeks the kingdom has been exposed to several waves of Iranian projectiles, first targeting military bases and then the port of Aqaba — raising fears that civilian infrastructure could be next. The attacks have killed at least two American servicemen, unwittingly putting Uncle Sam’s presence of several thousand troops on Jordanian soil in the spotlight — exactly what Amman had hoped to keep under the radar.
The trade deal that speaks louder than words
As Jordanian air defences engaged Iranian missiles over its skies, and America began to count its dead, Jordan offered something more forceful than mere condemnation. It signed a strategic trade agreement with Washington, reaffirming the depth of Jordan–US ties and Amman’s centrality in an American-led world order. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer hailed a deal to unlock new opportunities for American exporters; Jordan’s trade minister, Yarub Qudah, spoke of bolstering investment attraction from the world’s largest economy.
Beyond the rhetoric, the deal offers real substance, anchoring the Washington–Amman alliance and showcasing Jordan’s deft navigation of Trumpian economic policy. It is not a conventional free-trade agreement but an “Agreement on Reciprocal Trade” — one of a new breed of short, asymmetric instruments Washington has rolled out since 2025, trading tariff relief for commitments on customs enforcement, digital trade, forced labour and supply-chain security. It updates the original 2001 US–Jordan free trade agreement — tellingly, Washington’s first FTA with an Arab country.
In April 2025 Jordan was hit, like most of the world, with a 20% “reciprocal” tariff; the new deal caps that at 10%, a rate granted to only eight or nine countries. In exchange, Amman keeps American goods, including vehicles and agricultural products, flowing in duty-free, and accepts more stringent employment and environmental regulations. A “third-country” clause aimed at Chinese goods transhipped through Jordanian industrial zones cements the Hashemite Kingdom further in the US system — a concession that a trade-law analyst called less “reciprocal” than a one-sided accommodation of American interests.
Rather than resist Trump’s tariff threats, Amman moved early to accommodate: King Abdullah was the first Arab leader to visit the White House after Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, and Jordan launched trade talks by April, landing among the handful of countries with the lowest possible rate. That 10% floor matters enormously to a garments-and-textiles sector that alone accounts for roughly 70% of Jordan’s exports to America, while the deal’s digital-trade chapter — barring Jordan from taxing digital services or customs duties on electronic transmissions, services overwhelmingly US technology firms — positions Amman to court the tech-services investment it needs to diversify beyond apparel. Jordan’s concessions, surrendering regulatory autonomy over data flows and recognising the “adequacy” of US privacy standards, underscore its readiness to pay a high price for staying in Washington’s good graces.
For Washington, the deal serves interests beyond goodwill: it locks a wartime ally more tightly into its economic orbit just as Tehran tries to peel Amman away, and it turns Jordanian customs officials into enforcers against Chinese trade circumvention. It was bundled with commercial wins too — Royal Jordanian’s $1.4 billion Boeing Dreamliner purchase and a $1 billion US investment pledge from Jordanian pharma firm Hikma. Greer framed it as part of a pattern of deepening Middle East partnerships — a signal to allies from Cairo to Rabat that preferential tariffs now hinge on loyalty more than market logic.
Jordan–US ties withstand war and domestic pushback
As Iran’s missile barrages were underway, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House. The two jointly condemned Iran’s strikes on Jordan and Gulf allies and reaffirmed “the depth of the Jordanian-American partnership”. Even if long-planned, the timing of the influential minister’s visit — mere days ahead of the trade pact’s signing — underscored the kingdom’s prioritisation of Washington, especially in wartime.
For more than seven decades Jordan has been one of Washington’s steadiest Arab partners, a relationship built on roughly $34 billion in cumulative US aid — among the largest such sums to any country — that keeps it secure and financially afloat. Last year Congress raised annual aid from $1.45 billion to $1.65 billion, three times the 2010 allotment. That support underwrites Jordan’s outsized regional security role, including hosting American forces at bases such as Muwaffaq Salti (where the US troops were killed) that give Washington reach into Syria, Iraq and Iran without relying solely on Gulf positioning.
The partnership has been tested repeatedly by Iran–Israel clashes over the past three years. In April 2024, after Iran’s first direct attack on Israeli territory, Jordanian forces helped down dozens of Iranian drones and missiles alongside American and European aircraft — a striking alignment given Amman’s own criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. When Iran fired a larger salvo that October, Amman again intercepted missiles and drones over its airspace, triggering domestic backlash from Jordanians — a majority of whom are of Palestinian ancestry — who argued the kingdom was risking itself to shield Israel. Later, in the 12-Day War of June 2025, Jordan neutralised Israel-bound projectiles and separately confirmed shooting down munitions it feared would fall on its own populated areas.
Mindful of the domestic backlash from being seen as too close to an unpopular neighbour, Jordan has adopted a dual posture: defending Israeli skies as a matter of its own regional security, while condemning Israeli policy on the ground. Within the last week its Foreign Ministry condemned “escalating settler terrorism” in the West Bank and Israeli ministerial visits to the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque compound; earlier this year it denounced Israeli strikes on Lebanese army convoys and actions in Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire.
Mutual aversion to Islamism
Amman’s preference for the US-led, Israel-included order over the Islamic Republic of Iran or rival Islamist axes is as much about security and economic logic as about ideological outlook: promoting moderate religious practice over rigid extremism. The same instinct behind Abdullah’s suspicion of Iran’s Khomeinist worldview — a perception exacerbated by this year’s war — has driven his government’s marginalisation of the equivalent Islamist force in the Sunni world, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Jordan–US ties have deepened through the countries’ near-lockstep approach to the Jordanian Brotherhood over the past year, with both treating the Sunni Islamist movement as a domestic threat and a regional extension of fanatical, destabilising actors such as Hamas. Jordan moved first: in April 2025 authorities banned the Muslim Brotherhood outright, raiding offices and seizing assets after accusing members of manufacturing rockets and drones with Hamas training and funding — a striking move given the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Islamic Action Front, had just won the most parliamentary seats of any party months earlier. The group has since renamed itself the Nation (Ummah) Party to comply with a court order stripping it of religious references.
Washington escalated in parallel: a November 2025 executive order directed State and Treasury to weigh terrorism designations against Brotherhood chapters. By January the US proscribed the Jordanian branch as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, alongside its Egyptian counterpart, citing Hamas-linked recruitment and financing networks. Jordan has kept reinforcing the crackdown at home, including detentions tied to a banned Brotherhood gathering in Aqaba.
No patron like Uncle Sam
Taken together, the trade deal, the wartime interception missions and the Brotherhood crackdown are not separate stories but one cohesive strategy. Jordan has learned that survival in a neighbourhood prone to violent upheaval depends less on passive neutrality than on making itself indispensable to Washington — economically, militarily and ideologically. The kingdom absorbs Iranian missiles, polices its own Islamists and signs away regulatory autonomy, betting that deep entanglement with American muscle is safer than the alternative. Up to now, it has been a prudent wager, one that has kept the Hashemite throne standing through decades of regional collapse. Abdullah II appears to be betting that tightening the bond to Washington further will secure his country’s future — a bet that must now withstand a battle fought partly on Jordanian soil, one that is as much a contest for hearts and minds as it is a physical confrontation.