Former Jordanian Ambassador To Iran: We Must Form Ties With Minorities And Oppositionists In Iran In Order To Repel Its Attempts To Undermine Jordan

Amid Jordan's ongoing struggle against attempts by Iran-backed militias to smuggle weapons and drugs into the country from Syria,[1] Jordanian diplomat and politician Bassam Al-Amoush, who served as Jordan's ambassador to Tehran and as minister of parliamentary affairs and  administrative development,  wrote an article on the Jordanian news site Ammon News in which he slammed Iran's subversive policy in the region and especially in Jordan.  He argued that Jordan has been struggling for years against the Iranian regime, which is a Western tool intended to harm the Islamic nation, and which pursues a "strategic" policy of infiltrating Jordan in order gain influence within it, as it has done in many other regional countries. Iran, he elaborated, has tried to infiltrate Jordan in different ways—whether by forming armed organizations within it, by promoting Shi'ite tourism to Jordan and becoming  involved in economic projects there, or by using its militias to smuggle arms and drugs into the kingdom.

Al-Amoush therefore called on the Jordanian authorities to expose Iran's actions, to form a popular force that would help the army deter Iran, and also to form ties with ethnic minorities and opposition elements within Iran, such as the Mujahedin Khalq organization, and use them to pressure the Iranian regime.

It should be mentioned that, several days after it was posted on Ammon News, the article was also posted on Mujahedin Khalq's Arabic website, without the paragraph calling on Jordan to form ties with the organization.[2]

This is not the first time Al-Amoush has warned about Iran's attempts to undermine Jordan. In an October 21, 2022 interview on Al-Arabiya, he stated that Iran was trying to establish an armed militia in Jordan and was also working to flood Jordan with Iran-manufactured drugs.[3]

Bassam Al-Amoush (Image: Arabic.mojahedin.org, January 16, 2024)

The following are translated excerpts from the article:[4]

"The Iran I will speak of today is the Iran of the Mullahs, not the country [itself] or its people. My comments refer only to the regime that was placed in the hands of Khomeini in 1979, when the stage of British colonialism gave way to the stage of American colonialism, out of fear of a Soviet takeover. This [process also] included Egypt, Libya and Iraq, [and was carried out] by means of figures who served as new pawns after their predecessors had completed their role or were unsuitable for the new stage. Khomeini was brought over from Paris and given a large country, full of oil, overlooking the oil[-rich] Arabian Gulf as well as the Caspian Sea, [which is also rich in] oil and close to Soviet [Russia].

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"The mission assigned to the new man [Khomeini] after the regional sheriff, the [Iranian] Shah, left the area was to create a new rift in the Islamic nation, in the form of sectarian division. To this end, the slogan of exporting [Iran's Islamic] Revolution was brandished, and delegations of Islamic movements [i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood], lacking sufficient political awareness, arrived [in Iran] one after the other. Some of these [movements even] demanded that Khomeini declare an Islamic Caliphate!! This prompted several [Sunni] countries, including Jordan, to sever their diplomatic relations [with Iran], and to renew them only after the talk about exporting the revolution stopped…

The relations stagnated and suspicion prevailed. At the same time, the Iranian embassy [in Jordan] recruited political and media groups and formed ties with them. This came to the point of forming an armed militia that was exposed, which caused Jordan to expel the [Iranian] ambassador.

"In 2001, Jordan intercepted weapons sent by [Hizbullah Secretary-General] Hassan Nasrallah, who even admitted that he had sent them in order to smuggle them into Palestine!! Jordan put this matter aside, wanting to maintain its ties [with Iran], but the Mullahs stuck with determination to their strategic [efforts to] gain a foothold in Jordan, especially after media figure Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps [IRGC], admitted [in September 2014] that Iran was occupying four Arab capitals.[5]

"The Iranians tried to gain a foothold [in Jordan], sometimes in the guise of [religious] tourism [to Shi'ite sites in the kingdom] and sometimes in the guise of taking part in the Disi Water Conveyance [Project].[6] Today they have shifted to trying to infiltrate Jordan forcefully by smuggling weapons and drugs [into the country] from Syria, and their clashes with our army are almost unceasing. They also exploited the Al-Aqsa Flood [war, i.e., the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza] and demanded to enter [Jordan] through Iraq in order to come to Gaza's rescue!![7] They insist on infiltrating our country, and my anger is not directed at them but at our government, which is called upon to take every precaution and all the measures necessary in order to defeat and deter them, rather than suffice with an unceasing and undeclared war [against Iran].    

"There is a need to expose [the Iranians], raise public awareness of the dangers they pose and form a popular force that will aid the army and whose only mission will be to stop [the Iranian infiltration]. We should also form ties with the oppressed Iranian people: with the Sunni Arabs in Ahvaz, with the Sunni Kurds and with the Shi'ites of the [oppositionist] Mujahedin Khalq [organization], so as to gain leverage on the imperialist [Iranian] regime that sows devastation and destruction in our Arab and Islamic countries and in [other] world countries."[8]