By Samah Abdel Fattah | 2024-07-08

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is trying to destabilize Jordan through smuggling operations that seek to move weapons, explosives and fighters into the kingdom from Syria, Jordanians and Syrians said.

Iran-affiliated groups, especially those based in Syria, have been making successive attempts to destabilize the kingdom's security for quite some time, for a number of reasons, Jordanian political researcher Raed Khalil told Al-Fassel.

"The first is to find a foothold in the kingdom to carry out terrorist attacks and recruit elements to work for the IRGC, as there are no real organized cells in Jordan, in contrast to its neighboring countries," he said.

Iran-aligned groups may also seek to target military or diplomatic facilities of the United States, or countries in the region that have strong strategic partnerships with it, in retaliation for these relationships, he added.

Jordanian forces on June 24 detonated explosives found hidden in a commercial warehouse in an industrial area southeast of Amman that security sources said were part of an Iran-linked plot to destabilize a key US ally, Reuters reported.

Two days earlier, Jordanian authorities announced they had detonated explosives uncovered in another location in the capital.

The explosives found June 22 in a residential area near a military airport used by US army planes were hidden by the same group of suspects, Reuters said.

The two operations demonstrate the capability of the Jordanian security forces and the strength of the kingdom's intelligence apparatus, Khalil told Al-Fassel.

Attempts to penetrate Jordan

Syrians who reside near the border are "fully aware" of the efforts of Iran's affiliates in Syria to smuggle weapons, militants and drugs into Jordan, Syrian journalist Mohammed al-Abdullah told Al-Fassel.

"Elements of the Iranian militias and the smugglers who cooperate with them view Jordan as an enemy whose defenses and security must be breached by any means possible," he said.

Some smuggling operations succeed, despite the tightened security on the Jordanian-Syrian border, al-Abdullah said, due to the difficulty of monitoring all border crossings and the ruggedness of the terrain in some areas.

Others are conducted by professional smuggling gangs that have been operating between the two countries for decades and have agents working for them in both countries, he said, noting that "their primary goal is money."

Some smuggling gangs see destabilizing Jordan's security as "a golden opportunity for them to lift the cordon imposed on the border" for their own gain, he said, which is an ambition shared by Iran, albeit for different reasons.

Jordanian authorities believe Iran and its allied groups also aim to recruit young people in Jordan in a bid to expand the Iranian regime's regional network of aligned forces, Reuters reported.