The U.S.-Iran MOU and the Future of King Abdullah

Caught between Washington's exit and Prince Hamza's rise, the ultimate fate of the Hashemite monarch.

Several days ago, the world witnessed an event that would have been dismissed by most Western analysts, particularly those who pushed for the war with Iran, as a strategic impossibility: an unprecedented, direct bilateral memorandum between the United States and Iran. It was a temporary transactional agreement designed to reopen maritime shipping lanes and relieve the immediate economic pressures mounting on both Washington and Tehran.

Yet, this unprecedented memorandum immediately faced fierce bipartisan criticism. From the halls of Congress to the capitals of its regional allies, critics condemned the deal as an official abandonment of American security architecture. A concession that prioritized a short-term survival strategy over a regional order that was, until several days ago, considered non-negotiable.

​Yet, for Washington, the decision to formalize the agreement was not a matter of choice, but rather a response to a strategic reality that made it clear that its regional policy was no longer sustainable: Washington simply lacked the economic or military capabilities to sustain an ongoing conflict.

Economically, the war was costing a billion and a half dollars a day at a time when the government was actively gutting public resources, including funds for education, health, and essential social needs. Furthermore, the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz had triggered a sharp rise in inflation at a time when the U.S. economy was being compounded by a $39 trillion national debt.

​Militarily, the outcome was equally definitive, as the regional bases that once allowed the United States to project power were significantly compromised within the first three weeks of the conflict. By successfully penetrating regional air defense grids and destroying high-value assets, including more than three dozen various aircraft and one-third of the American THAAD systems globally, the Iranians had been able to eliminate the very architecture that guaranteed American hegemony in the region.

​Politically, the damage was even more profound as the United States found itself, for the first time, virtually isolated on the global stage. Decades of military intervention, paired with a glaring double standard in its policy toward Israel, had stripped away American international support and exposed its behavior to global scrutiny.

Yet, this was not merely a loss of diplomatic capital but the total evaporation of the American triad of influence. By failing to secure the regional architecture militarily and proving unable to maintain the economic flow that fueled the status quo, Washington was effectively forced to forfeit its responsibility of defending the very regimes it had long pretended to protect. For the regimes in the region, which had staked their entire existence on the permanence of the American umbrella, finding themselves abandoned to a new, non-Arab-American-Israeli reality, left them exposed to forces they could no longer manage.

​Nowhere was this more precarious than in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and its King, King Abdullah. For decades, the Kingdom functioned as a pro-Western anchor, held together by a sacred, unwritten covenant between the throne and the East Bank tribes, notably the Bani Hassan. A sacred covenant in which the tribes provided the military and domestic muscle to secure the Kingdom, while the monarchy guaranteed their economic protection and tribal status.

​The U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, however, shattered this contract by destroying the two pillars that sustained the relationship between the monarchy and the tribes. By initiating a conflict that drew a massive Iranian response, the king effectively voided his primary responsibility to protect the soil from foreign-provoked chaos. Furthermore, with the Persian Gulf closed and the total halt of financial inflows, the monarchy also broke the economic pillar that sustained its commitment to the tribes. With both security and economic guarantees nullified, the covenant between the King and the tribes was effectively dead.

​Seeing the state’s failure to maintain the covenant that had defined the tribes for more than a millennium, major tribal confederations, specifically the Bani Hassan, Bani Sakher, Howeitat, and Bani Ahmad, took direct, systematic actions designed to enforce the agreement.

They began by controlling the borders, which halted the transit of goods to Saudi Arabia and Israel, restricted access to electricity, water, and other vital utilities, and acted as the eyes and ears for Iranian interests along the Jordanian-Iraqi border. Effectively demonstrating to the King that the Palace’s authority was no longer absolute or accepted.

Consequently, the palace was unable to suppress tribal actions because the state’s security apparatus was not a monolith. Rather, two distinctive entities under the same system. One being, the Special Royal Guard, an elite force of 25,000 traditionally drawn from non-Arab minorities like the Circassians to ensure loyalty to the throne. The other, the Jordan Arab Army, made up of 115,000 soldiers who are the very sons of the tribes challenging the palace.

​With the conventional military and state structure largely neutralized by its own tribal composition, the confederation began to galvanize around Prince Hamzah, King Abdullah’s half-brother and former Crown Prince. Bearing a remarkable resemblance to his father, the adored King Hussain, the tribes saw in Hamza a return to the soil and a restoration of the tribal pact that King Abdullah had squandered.

​This pivot toward a legitimate successor, a direct challenge to the Palace’s fading authority, was strengthened and codified by the recent U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). For the tribes, who had long viewed the American military footprint as a foreign intrusion and a threat to their cultural and political status, the MOU ironically was not necessarily a setback but rather a profound vindication. It proved that King Abdullah had traded internal security for a Western security architecture that Washington had now actively abandoned.

Today, the Palace, once the impenetrable anchor of American influence in the region, is now tethered to a fading patron while attempting to navigate a relationship with a rising hegemon.

Consequently, King Abdullah finds himself standing at the end of an era where the path forward offers very little room for his survival. With both pillars of his rule, the American security umbrella and unequivocal tribal support, no longer in existence, the ultimate geopolitical question is no longer about the durability of the Hashemite throne, but rather, the fate of King Abdullah II himself.