Air raid sirens sounded again in parts of Jordan early Tuesday as Iranian missiles targeted the kingdom.
“Air defense systems tonight intercepted and shot down three missiles coming from Iranian territory, which entered Jordanian airspace and targeted the kingdom’s territory,” the army said in a statement.
No injuries were reported, but the latest attacks follow a series of attacks in the past few days that have heightened the risks for one of the United States’ closest Arab allies: Last week, an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. base in Jordan killed two American service members and wounded nearly 30 others.
Jordan is one of eight Arab countries that host permanent US military facilities. Some other host countries – particularly the Gulf countries – have been the targets of Iranian attacks since the United States and Israel launched joint attacks on Iran in late February.
Although Iran fired missiles toward Jordan shortly thereafter, it has since reduced direct attacks on the kingdom, allowing it to intercept Iranian missiles launched toward Israel, arguing that it was acting in defense of its airspace.
“Iran reserves the right to retaliate against any state in the region where there are US military assets or bases, and Jordan is one of them,” Erwin van Veen, a senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, told DW. “Only Jordan’s King Abdullah II’s options are quite limited because Jordan is in a very precarious balance with respect to military and economic dependence on the Americans.”
On Sunday, in the first diplomatic standoff, Jordan summoned Iran’s top diplomat in Amman and demanded an immediate end to what the Foreign Ministry called “unreasonable and blatant Iranian attacks.”
Jordan’s political and economic tightrope walk
America is Jordan’s biggest foreign supporter. Under the seven-year memorandum of understanding, signed in 2022, Washington agreed to provide $1.45 billion (€1.27 billion) annually in economic and military aid. In 2025, Congress plans to increase it to $1.65 billion, three times more than in 2010.
Additionally, a defense cooperation agreement signed in January 2021 grants US forces formal access to Jordanian military facilities. According to a recent news reportCurrently, there are 4,000 US troops stationed in Jordan, an increase from previous years.
However, in March Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi insisted that there were no foreign military bases in the country. Kelly Pettillo, program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said anti-US sentiment may be one reason for reducing the foreign military presence in Jordan.
“Despite Jordan’s efforts to remain neutral in this war, the existing alliance with the US not only affects Jordan’s fragile security, but also causes public discontent,” he told DW.
He speculated that Jordan, like its Gulf allies in the region, might begin to question whether its alliance with the US was beneficial to the country’s stability or actually led to instability.
A 2026 referendum The Arab Barometer, a non-partisan public opinion research network, concluded that only 12% of Jordanians view US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy favourably.
Jordan–Israel relations
“The second risk for Amman is that Iran’s attacks could put it in the same camp as Israel,” Petillo warned. “This perception could create further discontent among the broader public, creating space for protests as was already seen during the war in Gaza, when people called for an end to the Israel-Jordan 1994 peace treaty.”
In the last three years, relations between Israel and Jordan have become very tense. In November 2023, both countries recalled their ambassadors after Jordan condemned Israel’s conduct during the early days of the war in Gaza, which began following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the US, the European Union and others.
Jordan has been at the forefront of efforts to push for a two-state solution, which would provide the Palestinians with their own state alongside Israel.
The Palestinian issue is of particular importance to Jordanian citizens as more than half of the population, including Queen Rania, have Palestinian roots. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), approximately 2.4 million Palestine refugees live in Jordan.
But Jordan has repeatedly rejected the displacement of Palestinians into the state, especially considering the high cost of hosting refugees who have nothing but guarantees of return.
“Jordan has faced a sharp decline in USAID funding and the US withdrawal from UNRWA,” Petillo said.
This comes as Jordan struggles with high public debt and unemployment.
Popular anger over Israel has recently been heightened by the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the United Nations and rights groups say is set to accelerate after 2023. Increasing settler violence has made life worse for Palestinians in the West Bank.
According to the aid organization Save the Children, even more 1,000 Palestinian children Settlers in the West Bank were displaced by increased violence in the first six months of 2026. This was half the total number of children forced from their homes by settler violence in the previous three-year period.
Erwin van Veen said, “As the current Israeli coalition wrote in its own coalition agreement at the beginning of its term in 2022, it intends to eventually annex the West Bank.”
He said, “Jordan, in many ways, is between a rock and a hard place, because it has little room for maneuver – neither toward Israel, nor toward Iran, nor toward Washington.”
The West Bank, a land-locked area of approximately 5,655 square kilometers (2,183 sq mi), lies between Israel and Jordan. Israel captured it from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. According to the United Nations Security Council, “The establishment of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity.”
Edited by: Anne Thomas, Carla Bleiker