Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with the Trump Administration and the government of Saudi Arabia, undermined the stability of the regime of King Abdullah II of Jordan, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
The affair culminated in the arrest in April of Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, the half-brother of King Abdullah, according to the report.
The Post claimed that the efforts to undermine the king began with the Trump Administration's frustration that Abdullah was not compromising on the issue of Jerusalem and other issues relating to Palestinian Arab demands. The administration allegedly felt that Abdullah's stance was jeopardizing their attempts to finalize a wider Middle East peace deal and would contribute to the hardening of the Palestinian Authority's positions.
The administration also felt that Jordan was standing in the way of a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would have been the feather in the cap of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan which the Trump Administration brokered in 2020.
Officials in the administration made their displeasure known, a factor which is alleged to have contributed to instability in Jordan.
“Trump believed the king was an obstacle to the peace process,” a former CIA official said.
The report stated that Trump, Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “did not act to overthrow the king but their actions certainly weakened him and encouraged his enemies,"
In April 2021, the Jordanian government announced that it had foiled a coup attempt against King Abdullah, including the arrest of Prince Hamza as well as Hassan bin Zaid and Basem Ibrahim Awadallah.