Iran has been increasingly targeting Jordan with attacks like the one on Friday that killed two U.S. servicemen. The reason, analysts said, is because Jordan has been playing a more central role in U.S. military operations against Iran.
The U.S. and Jordan have long cooperated on military, intelligence and counterterrorism and Jordan hosts major U.S. air bases. U.S. officials say Washington increasingly relied on Jordan in the run-up to and the early days of the war against Iran, as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from the Gulf Arab nations of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to relatively more secure locations in Jordan and neighboring Israel.
Jordan’s role grew as other American allies in the region restricted Washington’s ability to base troops in and fly aircraft over their territories, the U.S. officials said.
But unlike the resource-rich Gulf-nations, Jordan relies heavily on the U.S. for foreign aid and is not in a strong position to deny Washington’s wishes.
Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based think tank focused on the Middle East, said on Sunday that he imagined Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia “are now even more hesitant to let the U.S. broadly use their bases to attack Iran,” after Iran retaliated against them. “But Jordan, because of its security agreement with the U.S. and the very one-sided, dominant relationship Washington has with Jordan, would not be in a position to say no.”
On Sunday, Jordan evacuated the international airport and seaport in the coastal city of Aqaba after a “specific and credible threat,” the U.S. embassy there said. The country’s air defenses later shot down three Iranian missiles that targeted the country, the Jordanian military said, while a fourth landed in an unpopulated area.
During the first phase of the war, Iran focused more heavily on retaliation against Israel and on Gulf Arab countries that assisted the United States. But now that the conflict has entered a new phase, with the U.S.-Iran cease-fire steadily unraveling, the military picture appears to have changed.
On Friday, an Iranian attack on a military base in Jordan killed two U.S. soldiers and left another service member missing, according to American officials. It was the fourth attack last week on U.S. forces in Jordan, which left dozens of U.S. soldiers wounded and damaged a number of helicopters.
The first attack hit a residential facility at King Faisal Air Base, wounding as many as five U.S. service members. The second hit a base in eastern Jordan, damaging a number of U.S. Blackhawk helicopters.
Two days later, the officials said, Iranian missiles hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq, a hub for the U.S. Air Force, with a barrage of attacks, wounding about 20 U.S. troops rushing to take cover in bunkers. That base was struck again on Friday, when the two soldiers were killed and four were wounded.
Iran said on Friday it had launched a drone attack targeting fuel tanks at the U.S. base in Azraq, Jordan, as well as missiles and drones to target aircraft shelters, according to Fars News Agency, a semiofficial Iranian news outlet. Previously Iran has said it targeted radar and communications systems used by U.S. forces.
The U.S. military has long operated out of Jordanian air bases and there are nearly 4,000 service members in the country, according to a recent Congressional report.
Earlier this month, Jordan’s army chief Maj. Gen. Yousef Hunaiti and U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Daniel Zimmerman met and discussed expanding military and defense cooperation and partnership between the two countries, according to Jordan’s Petra state news agency.
U.S. economic and military aid to Jordan, going back to the 1950s, has tripled over the past 15 years. In the 2025 fiscal year, the U.S. gave Jordan approximately $33.8 billion.
