With Biden in White House, King Abdullah reclaims Middle East role - analysis
| Author | MOHAMMAD AL-KASSIM/THE MEDIA LINE |
| Published date | 12 October 2021 |
| Publication title | Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel) |
Abdullah held a secret meeting with new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi. He also convened with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas twice in the last few months and spoke on the phone with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
He met with Sisi and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi last July at a summit in the capital Baghdad that was seen largely as an attempt to neutralize Iran's influence across the region.
Last August he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
The message from Amman is loud and clear: After being marginalized during the Trump administration, Jordan is back as a stable mediator in a tempestuous region; the king is wasting no time reclaiming his country's historic role as a major player in the Middle East.
Abdullah sees in Biden's administration a breath of fresh air, a return to traditional US diplomacy, and an opportunity to reclaim his country's historic position as a strategic ally of Washington.
Bassam al-Manaseer, former head of the Jordanian Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Media Line that Jordan's old-new role can be attributed to its moderate policies in the region.
"Jordan is witnessing a new start in foreign policy after the advent of the Biden administration, after Jordan's role had been marginalized by the previous US administration, the Trump administration," he says.
Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser and major general, told The Media Line that Abdullah was taking advantage of two political changes, "one is the change in America, and no less important is the change in Israel."
Amidror stresses that, despite the cool relations between the king and former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ties between Jordan and Israel haven't changed.
"It is understood in both countries that it doesn't matter who is the prime minister in Jerusalem, that the stability of Jordan is very important for the stability of the Middle East," he adds. "The basic relationship and the cooperation relating to the security part [of the ties] were strong before and after the tense relations between the two leaders," he says.
Amidror, who is the Anne and Greg Rosshandler Senior Fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, a conservative security think tank, says opening communication channels with Damascus is an Arab affair.
"The fact that the king is speaking...
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