AMMAN — The departure of President Bashar al-Assad has brought temporary relief to some leaders in Jordan who have endured decades of volatile political and security dynamics with Syria during the Assad regime.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
Jordanian leadership recognizes, however, that this relief is intertwined with the uncertainties of what lies ahead, given the unpredictable developments following the rapid fall of Assad’s regime in just 12 days, led by the armed opposition factions under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), labeled a “terrorist organization.” The transition occurred without significant bloodshed but carries potential risks to Jordanian and regional security.
Jordan has long complained about blatant Syrian interference in its domestic affairs, deprivation of its annual water share from the Yarmouk River (estimated at 375 million cubic meters), arms and drug smuggling across its desert borders, and fluctuating bilateral relations ranging from tensions to normal business dealings or outright diplomatic freezes. Today, the kingdom observes the shifting scene with caution and great concern.
A Jordanian official said that it might take “a month or two before the trajectory of the new Syria and the impact of Assad’s departure on neighboring countries become clearer.”
The swift collapse of Assad’s regime, a close ally of Iran, is seen as a quick win for Jordan and the broader Arab moderation axis. This, coupled with Israel’s dismantling of Hezbollah’s military power in Lebanon and the elimination of its top leadership, has broken the backbone of Iran’s resistance axis and diminished its regional influence.
Jordan’s stakes in post-Assad Syria
This shift could ease public pressure driven by Iran’s resistance rhetoric, which has been used to undermine the credibility of regimes that have signed peace treaties with Israel while adhering to political dialogue as a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Some Arab states are now preparing to offer controversial concessions to Donald Trump’s new administration to facilitate deals aimed at ending global conflicts with minimal damage to their security and stability.
The best-case scenario for Jordan is for the power transition process to be peaceful, with the participation of all components of Syrian society, including the Kurds, and for Syrian refugees to begin leaving the kingdom and returning to their cities and villages.
It is important that the transition of power in Syria produces a state that respects the sovereignty and rights of its neighbors, including Israel, according to Jordanian officials who spoke to Daraj on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the phase.
Three bad scenarios
Yet there are other potential scenarios that concern officials in Jordan. First, is the possibility of a second civil war, leading to a new wave of displacement toward Jordan, which had been working with the Assad regime over the past two years on gradual arrangements for the return of more than 1 million Syrian refugees to de-escalation zones.
The second scenario is for remnants of armed groups that returned to southern Syria with regime forces, Hezbollah and its militias in 2018, to exploit the situation to create chaos on the border, requiring Jordanian military intervention.
The third scenario is for Amman to wake up overnight to a new dictatorial neighbor with takfiri ideology supported by Turkey, replacing a secular dictator supported by Iran.
Shia representation conflict and the “Sunni giant”
Iran seeks to impose itself as a regional power with a nuclear program monopolizing Shia representation through its local tools — Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.
In contrast, there is rhetoric touching on Turkey and its ally Qatar, both of which embrace the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideology that threatens Jordan’s political system.
Turkey seeks to be a regional power representing a secular model with Islamic roots reflecting the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, successfully applied in its country, and desires to transfer it to Sunni-majority countries struggling with fundamentalist Islam. Yet what succeeded in Turkey may fail in the region due to differences in education systems and social contexts.
In Jordan, the Islamic current poses a political and security challenge.
Security officials in Egypt and Jordan fear that influential takfiri forces in their conservative societies might hide behind the Turkish model and seize the opportunity to overturn the ruling system, as happened with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia after the 2011 revolutions.
At that time, when political Islam came to power, the central state, supported by the Gulf, intervened to end Brotherhood rule in both countries, curbing public freedoms, imprisoning many members, while others fled to Qatar and Turkey.
In Jordan, the Islamic current poses a political and security challenge to the regime, as its rhetoric opposes Israel and holds influence in a demographically divided, economically strained street.
In the latest elections, the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, won the largest number of seats contrary to the expectations of the security apparatus, becoming the largest bloc in parliament before the New Covenant party, a conservative group that won five seats, rallied partisan and independent deputies to form the largest parliamentary bloc.
