Middle East expert and New York Times bestselling author Joel Rosenberg told The Daily Caller Monday that Jordan could see the downfall of its king and royal family due to increased pressure from ISIS and a refugee crisis.
Rosenberg has just returned to his home in Israel after spending five days with King Abdullah II touring the country. Jordan is regarded as one of the key Sunni allies for America in the Middle East.
“Jordan’s king is sitting on a volcano, nearly surrounded by a raging forest fire, bracing for a massive earthquake,” Rosenberg wrote in a recent op-ed.
North of Jordan is Syria, and to the east is Iraq. Jordan has accepted more 1.3 million refugees from Syria. “The Jordanian security forces told me you know, point-blank, they don’t know who these people are,” Rosenberg told TheDC.
“[ISIS would] love to capture Amman and seize Jordan as part of the caliphate,” Rosenberg told TheDC.
He added that Jordanian security services are rounding up one ISIS or ISIS-related cell per week. The threat from refugees that Jordan faces is not only from the refugees themselves but from an uprising of disgruntled citizens.
As of December 2015, refugees constitute a third of Jordan’s population.
“There’s the danger that people are going to get angry and that there’s some tipping point that people decide they’re not going to take it anymore and have Cairo style, Tripoli style protests that could become violent,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg is a former aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has written 11 novels about Middle Eastern terrorism, and five non-fiction books.
The author was fairly adamant that the U.S should provide Jordan more help. Currently the U.S gives Jordan a $1 billion in aid, but Rosenberg doesn’t think it’s enough.
“I think he’s not getting enough help and I think it’s incredibly dangerous what’s happening and it could lead to great danger, and even the demise of the Hashemites,” the author told TheDC.