Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
- Geography has cursed Jordan. To Abdullah’s north is the charnel house of Syria, a failed state in the making. To his east is Iraq’s bloody Anbar province. Saudi Arabia, ruled by the superannuated princes of the House of Saud, the ancient rivals of the Hashemites, sits to his southeast. To his west are the obstreperous Israelis, as well as the disputatious Palestinians. Al‑Qaeda wants to kill him. The Iranian regime doesn’t like him very much either, especially since he denounced, in 2004, what he saw as a rising, Iranian-led “Shia crescent” looming over the Middle East. His country is broke, dependent on the United States, the International Monetary Fund, and haughty gulf Arabs to cover its budget. (The IMF recently forced fuel-price hikes that have intensified the domestic resentment directed at the throne.)
EDIT: Jesus, his wife is gorgeous.
user-inactivated · 4349 days ago · link ·
Warning bells, though:Today, he says, he is making progress in reforming the agency. Two recent GID chiefs have gone to jail for corruption. A third died in disgrace. The current head is trying to depoliticize the agency, officials in Jordan say, aided by management advice from the CIA.