History shows that a state rarely falls from an external blow; it mainly collapses because its internal foundation has already been hollowed out from within.
For decades, stability across the Arab monarchies depended on an unwritten, ironclad covenant between central thrones and ancient, foundational tribes. In
Jordan, that meant an enduring alliance with core East Bank tribes such as the Bani Hassan, Bani Sakhr, and Huwaitat, who served as the true bedrock of Hashemite legitimacy and internal security.
That covenant was an unwritten contract anchored in mutual protection, tribal loyalty, and Hashemite religious guardianship over Islam’s third holy site, Al-Aqsa Mosque. A foundational pact that had defined the Hashemite kingdom since its inception.
However, King Abdullah broke that covenant when he traded away the foundational social contract for Washington-led alignments and foreign financial backing. Similar to Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, who severed historical ties with his kingdom’s traditional power centers to force a top-down transformation, Abdullah’s abandonment of Jordan’s tribal system left the palace largely isolated.
Be it ignoring the Palestinian issue, abandoning the protection of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or aligning with Israel and the U.S. against regional actors, particularly supporting the war against Iran, King Abdullah’s policies were seen as a betrayal of a covenant that had defined the land and the people for centuries.
In response to the betrayal, tribal elders, including leaders from Bani Hassan and Bani Sakher, repeatedly urged the monarch to respect the ancient covenant by abandoning his policies, including demanding the removal of American bases in Jordan.
However, following the continuous dismissal of their concerns by the palace, the tribes responded by paralyzing the very machinery the crown needed to maintain the state. From stalling vital public services like water and electricity to controlling the flow of goods across the corridors and provincial transit routes, the tribes successfully broke the crown’s grip over the provinces.
This tribal confrontation, however, did not stay contained within provincial administration; it bled directly into the state’s economic core. Spanning the Bani Hassan in the north, the Bani Sakhr in the center, and the Huwaitat along the southern frontiers, the major tribal confederations began to utilize their control over strategic national trade arteries, such as the Desert Highway, to completely halt commercial traffic and freight shipments across these key corridors.
By enforcing this blockade, the tribes delivered a two-pronged blow: internally, they starved the Jordanian treasury of vital revenues and broke central authority, while externally, they systematically disrupted the overland supply lines vital to U.S. and Israeli logistics.
If the economic and administrative collapse was not enough, the fracture inevitably bled into the final sphere of palace control: the military. Unlike systems where the security apparatus operates as a uniform block, Jordan’s security architecture is strictly stratified into three distinct pillars. At the center of regime protection stands the elite Royal Guard, drawn from non-tribal minorities like the Circassians to ensure unyielding personal loyalty to the throne. Below them sits the regular Jordanian army, composed of the very sons of the East Bank tribes, such as the Ban-Sakher, who were now breaking with the crown, while the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) draws its upper echelons heavily from influential traditional clans like the Majali.
Because of this system, where the regular armed forces and intelligence ranks are filled by the sons of the tribes whose loyalty is more to their tribe than the state, the military can never function as an instrument against the tribes themselves.
When instructions came down from Amman to neutralize tribal pushback or arrest local leaders leading the transit shutdowns, for example, military personnel engaged in passive non-compliance and refused to turn their weapons on their own kin.
For King Abdullah, however, the fracture did not stop at internal defiance. It bled directly into external security vulnerabilities, such as some networks opening unauthorized backchannels to regional actors like Iran. A reality laid bare when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps publicly thanked local contacts and military personnel inside Jordan for their cooperation.
Stripped of these administrative and security pillars, King Abdullah is now faced with a fundamental structural crisis: a crown that can no longer sustain its internal dominance or project regional stability. Therefore, without a reliable military apparatus willing to crack down on its own people, without tribal support, and with key border networks compromised, the palace’s traditional levers of control have collapsed.
Yet, for the major tribal confederations, their objective is not the destruction of the Hashemite monarchy. Rather, it is to force the palace back to the social contract that had defined the historical covenant between the tribes and their kings for centuries.
To that end, the tribes have increasingly looked to Prince Hamza, the former crown prince. Placed under house arrest since 2021, the estranged half-brother of King Abdullah, and married into the Bani Ahmed, one of the largest and most influential tribes, is widely viewed as the living embodiment of the old order and of King Hussein himself. With his demeanor, speech, and presence mirroring his late father, Hamza is seen by many as the figure who will restore the old covenant and unify the nation.
For the palace, however, this dynamic creates an insoluble trap. That is, keeping the popular Hamza isolated under house arrest only magnifies his mythos as the silenced voice of the tribes, but any move to further suppress him risks provoking the very open rebellion the regime is desperate to avoid.
Yet, regardless of what the palace decides to do with Prince Hamza, King Abdullah finds himself trapped by the very systems he dismantled. Once the central anchor of Hashemite survival and regional balancing, King Abdullah now presides over a state where neither the loyalty of the military nor the protection of the tribes is guaranteed.
For Jordan itself, this cascading crisis has permanently altered the future of the state, leaving three stark outcomes: the king is reduced to a figurehead while the tribes and military govern under a restored traditional covenant; Prince Hamza is brought forward to take the throne and restore the historical covenant; or the ongoing paralysis shatters the central state entirely.
Regardless of which path unfolds, one reality remains fixed: the era of absolute, Amman-centric rule under King Abdullah has reached its end.
I'd like to recommend the several interviews Alistair Crooke has had over the last few days. He provides some in-depth history of Ansarallah which is very helpful in understanding the Tribes Mitra discusses here. The information on both posts compliment one another quite well. By extension that give a hint into what Iran's next step will be.
This is just one of them:
https://substack.com/@fijirefugee/note/c-340853785
This was the most informative article on what’s happening within Jordan I have read in many years. I have been wondering throughout the Gaza debacle what is going on with Jordan and King Abdullah. We hear almost nothing of them/him. Now I know why. I hope that they give option #2 a try.