Last week, Jerusalem agreed to sell Amman a much-larger-than-usual amount of water, while easing the way for Jordanian exports to the West Bank. The agreement seems a positive sign, after a crisis in relations this spring. But Edy Cohen sees Jordan going in a very different direction, that makes it an entirely unreliable ally for Israel:

On June 27, 2021, Jordan’s King Abdullah II met with Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Baghdad. All three announced an agreement to cooperate on transporting Iraqi oil through pipelines from Iraq to Jordan to Egypt, from where it will be exported to Europe through the Mediterranean. . . . The Iraqi government is a puppet state controlled by Iran. Exporting Iraqi oil through Jordan to Europe is simply exporting oil controlled by Iran, which rules Iraq through its Shiite militias and controls the country’s resources.

One day after this happened, Jordanian state media began promoting full financial cooperation with Iran. This is as shocking to the Jordanian public as it was to the Egyptian public 40 years ago when then-president Anwar Sadat announced peace with Israel. [The kingdom then] went further, with a monarchy-supported campaign to . . . promote the Shiite faith itself.

[Absent an about-face], it will not take long for Jordan to sink into darkness—just like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have. As for Israel, there is a fear of [Iran] opening a front from hell, sending drones or even digging tunnels in the areas bordering Jordan, which will be under the control of [the Islamic Republic’s agents].

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.