Jordan arrests 16 Muslim Brotherhood members accused of plotting terror attack against kingdom

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan announced on Tuesday that it had arrested 16 members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, the mother organization of the terrorist organization Hamas.

Jordanian authorities reported that the arrested terrorist suspects stand accused of “manufacturing missiles using local tools and others imported from abroad for illegal purposes, possessing explosives and firearms, concealing a missile ready for use, a project to manufacture drones, in addition to recruiting and training individuals inside the kingdom and subjecting them to training abroad.”

Political sources in Jordan told the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that the network was funded by countries in the region and received training from Hezbollah operatives and senior Hamas commanders in southern Lebanon.

Jordan’s General Intelligence Department announced in a post on 𝕏 that “the plot aimed at harming national security, sowing chaos and causing material destruction inside the kingdom.”

It did not specify the targets of the terrorist plot, however, security analyst Amer Al Sabaileh told Reuters that the terror plot included “new tactics, rockets and drones.”

“This means a complete change in the way the Muslim Brotherhood are dealing with Jordan and targeting its security,” Al Sabaileh assessed.

Jordanian authorities reportedly also arrested Khaled El Juhani, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked political party Islamic Action Front. It is unclear whether El Juhani is one of the 16 suspects arrested or an additional arrest. 

Jordanian authorities said they had been monitoring the cell since 2021. 

According to the report in Asharq Al-Awsat, the kingdom will sharpen its tactics against the operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in the future, and closely monitor all activities connected to it.

The Brotherhood famously operates numerous related organizations, many of them in the field of humanitarian aid and education, in the countries in which it operates, thus gaining popularity and influence.

Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1994 and is considered to be one of Washington’s closest allies in the Arab world. Various Islamist factions have over the years tried to undermine the fragile Hashemite Kingdom’s stability.

While Jordan maintains diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, there are widespread anti-Israel sentiments in the country, which has a Palestinian Arab majority population.

In an effort to placate the anti-Israel sentiments in its society, Jordanian officials have been vocal in their criticism of Israel’s military operations against the terrorist militia Hamas in Gaza. 

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump asked Jordan and Egypt to take in a large number of Gazans as part of Trump’s Gaza reconstruction plan. Both Jordan and Egypt have expressed their strong opposition to the idea of Gazans being relocated to their countries.

However, Trump has insisted that they should receive Gazans and has warned that Washington could withhold financial assistance to Jordan and Egypt if they do not comply with the Gaza plan. 

While the Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni organization, Jordan is also threatened by Shiite extremism exported from the Islamic Republic of Iran. The ayatollah regime in Tehran has tried for years to incorporate Jordan in its “Iranian Crescent,” a strategy that is aimed to build a Shiite empire stretching from Tehran in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. The ayatollahs have also tried to transform Jordan into an active terrorist front against the neighboring Jewish state. 

In December 2023, merely two months after the Oct. 7 massacre, Israeli authorities foiled a large-scale weapon smuggling attempt from Jordan into Judea and Samaria, internationally known as the West Bank.