Why we should be paying more attention to Jordan, according to new King Abdullah II biography 

American fascination with the Middle East and its colorful leaders — dictators and military generals and royals and Israeli premiers — dates back decades, from Saddam Hussein to Iran’s ayatollahs to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

One ruler has survived more or less unscathed over more than a quarter century, avoiding flashy headlines about power struggles or coups, all while keeping a tight grip on power and maintaining close, bipartisan ties with Washington. 

That’s Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who has ruled the country since 1999, taking over from his father, King Hussein, who ruled for 47 years. In The Most American King, a new biography of King Abdullah, author Aaron Magid argues that the Jordanian king’s staying power is what makes him interesting — and that the relative stability he has overseen demands attention in a region so often beset by chaos elsewhere.

“Jordan is a critical U.S. strategic partner, both in terms of money and in terms of U.S. troops — there are thousands of U.S. troops based in Jordan,” Magid, a Middle East analyst and former Amman-based journalist, told Jewish Insider in an interview this week. “But unfortunately, journalists often chase violence and wars and conflicts, and the Hashemite Kingdom has been remarkably stable over the past 25 years … Jordan, because it has less violence, it gets a lower media profile.” (Magid was a reporter at JI from 2016 to 2018.)

The book charts King Abdullah’s journey from boarding school in the U.S. and studying at Georgetown University to ruling a country whose language he hardly spoke, given his many years spent living and learning abroad. But it’s that intimate knowledge of American culture that, Magid argues, has allowed King Abdullah to cultivate the kind of lasting, bipartisan relationships with lawmakers that many other nations covet. King Abdullah was the first Arab leader to meet with Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump — in both terms — in the White House. 

Magid drew a distinction between Washington’s longtime relationship with Amman and Trump’s efforts this year to build closer ties with Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, each of which he visited in May.

“Qatar, which President Trump visited recently, is the same country that Trump called for a blockade against in 2017 for supporting terrorism. And Saudi Arabia, of course, right now might be close with Trump, but when the Democrats were in power, President Biden called them a pariah, and there’s a lot of Democratic opposition to Saudi Arabia,” Magid explained. “What makes Jordan unique is its ability to be close with both presidents and then have those very strong security ties as well.”

Jordan receives roughly $1.45 billion a year from the U.S., making it one of the largest recipients of American foreign assistance dollars. That’s despite King Abdullah’s public criticism of Israel, America’s strongest ally in the Middle East — and even harsher language from his wife, Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian descent. 

Still, despite taking a publicly hardline stance against Israel’s conduct in Gaza, King Abdullah has not seriously considered pulling Jordan out of its 1994 peace treaty with Israel, nor has he severed the crucial security ties between the two countries. Jordan also helped shoot down Iranian missiles fired at Israel last year.

“There were many disagreements with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, personally … but at the same time, King Abdullah has ensured that even though many in the country support annulling the peace treaty, he’s refused to do that,” said Magid. “Part of the reason he does that is because he’s been getting about $1.5 billion a year from Congress, and if he were to sever the peace deal, it would be unlikely he would reach that number of aid, and that aid is critical for the country. But I think he does understand that having some sort of relationship with Israel is in his benefit and his national security interest.” 

In his book, Magid reveals that King Abdullah’s public criticism of Israel was not a foregone conclusion. 

“There was a honeymoon period in terms of King Abdullah’s relationship with Israel as king, and it lasted about a year, 1999 and 2000. He says in an interview, ‘I have many friends in the IDF.’ That’s not language you would ever hear from King Abdullah today,” Magid recounted. “He praised Ehud Barak as someone who is great to work with, not something you’d ever hear him say again about an Israeli prime minister. And then he even said that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon raised Israel’s moral credibility. Once again, you’d never hear King Abdullah or any Jordanian official say anything positive about Israel’s morals in today’s day and age.”

King Abdullah has generally succeeded at balancing the concerns of Jordan’s population, the majority of whom are Palestinian, with the nation’s security needs, argues Magid. But he has “done a very poor job of providing jobs for his people,” Magid said. 

“Part of the issue for King Abdullah is he doesn’t have a grand accomplishment, either on the domestic front or on the foreign policy one,” said Magid. “But unlike his father, who had these grand moves, he has been much more toned down.”

During the reign of King Hussein, Jordan had some major victories, both strategic and tactical, as well as some major setbacks — like losing control of Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 war with Israel. Still, the stability that King Abdullah has maintained is coupled with a high unemployment rate and a move even further away from democracy, which does not help his image in the eyes of his countrymen.

“When you ask people, often behind closed doors, who is more popular, his father or him, most people will say his father. His father was loved,” said Magid. “But it’s difficult to know, exactly, given that you can go to jail — and many people have gone to jail in Jordan — for criticizing the king.”