Jordan’s recent crackdown on coup plotters has been the only blow to a network that has already collapsed due to Trump’s election defeat and the failure of the Century Deal Plan, leaving only a plan on paper.
In response to an alleged coup attempt, Jordanian security has arrested several prominent figures, two with close ties to the royal family, and placed the former crown prince under house arrest. Former Crown Prince Hamzah’s lawyer released a video to the BBC following the arrests, in which the prince states that he was instructed to remain at home and that his other forms of communication had been shut down. On Monday, he released an audio recording stating that although he did not wish to “escalate,” the restrictions on himself and his family were “unacceptable.”
The high-level arrests come in the midst of government repression of protests against increasingly authoritarian restrictions in Jordan. In his video, Prince Hamzah stated that “Jordanians have lost hope” as a result of corruption and misrule. Although Hamzah did not mention his half-brother the king, he recorded the video in front of an image of their father, the late and revered King Hussein, whom Hamzah resembles. Prince Hamzah is popular in Jordan, especially for his close ties to East bank Jordanian tribes as well as his command of Arabic, in contrast to King Abdullah, who is seen by some as too close to Palestinian interests due in part to the Palestinian heritage of his wife, Queen Rania, as well as his initially less-than-fluent command of Arabic.
The narrative put forward by the Jordanian government is that Prince Hamzah was involved with “foreign agents” in an attempted coup. In particular, Roy Shaposhnik, an Israeli friend of the prince who offered to host his wife and children, has been described by Jordanian security as a “former Mossad agent,” which Shaposhnik denies. Other rumors about foreign connections remain unsubstantiated: possible ties to the UAE appear unlikely, as none of the Gulf monarchs are interested in undermining the authority of one of their own.
The King may have hoped to keep his half-brother quiet as the palace sought to placate Jordanians by shifting blame for the country’s problems onto a handful of elites. Bassem Awadallah, a former confidant of King Abdullah II and later an advisor to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is often a fallen man for the king: unpopular decisions can be blamed on him rather than on Abdullah himself. During the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, protestors chanted for his removal from the government. The Jordanian regime may have hoped that by arresting him, along with Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family who also served as envoy to Saudi Arabia, frustrated Jordanians would feel temporarily appeased. In addition to their arrest, key figures of the Majali tribe were arrested, a powerful family that has historically expressed dissatisfaction with Abdullah’s rule.
Given the close ties between Prince Hamzah and those arrested, security services may have tried to contain the former crown prince by placing him under house arrest as a precaution. Yet rather than quietly accept, Prince Hamzah released the video while he still could, thereby escalating the situation, and forcing the Jordanian government to allege a coup attempt.