Friends,
Tuesday’s meeting between King Abdullah of Jordan and President Donald Trump is as urgent as it is historic.
When King Abdullah heads to the White House, he will be undertaking a host of goals and challenges, with his kingdom, Gaza, and the future of the region at stake.
For a seasoned monarch all too accustomed to crises, it may be one of the most important meetings of his reign.
An upcoming visit with Trump by Egyptian President Abdulfatteh El-Sisi will also carry high stakes.
The two leaders' personal diplomacy may play a pivotal role on what happens next in Gaza and beyond.
-Taylor
Jordan and Egypt: the Stakes
The focus of the King Abdullah-Trump talks will be an immediate crisis: President Trump’s proposal to forcibly transfer Gazans to Jordan and Egypt—a war crime that threatens to upend the demographics in Jordan and ignite the region.
President Trump doubled down on his “plan” in an interview aired on Monday, saying Palestinians would be relocated from Gaza and will not have the right of return and that the US would “own” the Strip long-term. The Israeli military is preparing a plan to encourage mass “voluntary” evacuations by Gazans.
Another urgent matter for the monarch is the displacement of more than 26,000 Palestinians by Israel’s military offensive in the northern West Bank. While operation “Iron Wall” has a stated goal of targeting militants, Amman sees the widespread destruction of West Bank refugee camps as a potential pushing of Palestinians into Jordan. Both prospects are being cheered by the Israeli far-right, including Israeli government coalition members, demanding Israel encourage “voluntary” mass relocation of Palestinians into Jordan.
I have previously written on the host of national security and socioeconomic reasons Jordan and Egypt won’t host large numbers of displaced Gazans. Since then, Jordan and Egypt have held the line, forming an Arab firewall to Trump's stated plan.
Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi warned last week that it would consider such actions as a “state of war”. Egypt warned “catastrophic consequences” of the scheme, saying Israel’s proposal to encourage mass relocations of Gazans “provokes the return of hostilities and poses risks on the entire region.””
Jordan mobilized this week its military along the Jordan Valley, its Western borders with the West Bank and Israel. It is sending a message in response to both the Trump plan and Israel’s West Bank offensive: no to migration of Palestinians into Jordan, forced or “voluntary.”
It comes as Jordan and Egypt attempt to strike a careful balance of domestic concerns and foreign relations: maintaining their alliance with the US while containing the fallout of Trump’s plans at home, all while placating enraged publics.
Can these Arab leaders, using Trump’s preferred mode of personal diplomacy and deal-making, talk the President out of a destructive, destabilizing war crime that would plunge their countries into instability?
The Leverage
Jordan and Egypt will try to impress on Trump the fallout of the mass migration of Gazans on security in their countries—and, directly, the security of Israel.
Egypt has long cited the threat of Hamas and Islamic Jihad infiltration onto its territory as a main reason it refuses to host mass waves of Gazans—first told to Secretary Blinken in the early days of the war in November 2023. The Sinai Peninsula, it warns, could be a new staging ground to attack Israel.
Jordan is expected to warn the Trump Administration that the expulsion of Gazans into Jordan would bring Iran to Israel’s 300-mile Western border, and allow Hamas a much greater range of mobility to attack Israel.
In the two months since the collapse of the Bashar al Assad regime and the disintegration of its “axis of resistance”, Jordanian and Palestinian Authority sources say Iran has increased its attempts to smuggle arms and explosives into Jordan and over the West Bank to support militant cells to carry out attacks on Israelis.
Should the US and Israel pressure Jordan to take in hundreds of thousands of Gazans, and an untold number of militants, there is a strong belief in Amman that Iran would make Jordan the destination country of arms smuggling in an attempt to transform the kingdom into a proxy base to attack Israel.
Iranian interference is a scenario fiercely rejected by the Jordanian state and public. Yet in a Trump-proposed scenario of one million Palestinians driven from Gaza into Jordan, authorities would be hard pressed to prevent settlements from becoming hotbeds of Iranian recruitment and activity.
President Trump’s leverage over both countries is clear: arms and cash.
America provides Egypt with $1.3 billion in annual military assistance, an agreement that benefits US arms manufacturers and one of the few direct support programs that have not been suspended by President Trump.
But the President’s leverage is greater over Jordan, which relies on $1 billion-plus in American aid, which is even factored into its yearly government budget.
Under an MoU signed in 2023, the US has pledged “a minimum” $1.03 billion in annual direct financial assistance to Jordan until 2029, helping it close its budget gap and pay government salaries. Washington has already paid Jordan up to August 2025, giving King Abdullah six months to persuade Trump to resume funding.
In late January, as Trump began his Gazan expulsion threats, Jordan signed a 3-billion-euro “strategic and comprehensive partnership” agreement with the EU—giving Amman a long-term pillar of non-American support. It is unclear whether support from Brussels will allow Jordan to completely forgo American aid, but it gives Amman leeway to rebuff Trump, withstand a US aid freeze and renegotiate.
The Saudi Card
The other leverage both Egypt and Jordan have is Saudi Arabia. President Trump prizes the prospect of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, seeing it has his path to a Nobel Peace prize.
Yet Trump’s Gaza plan and statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week calling for a Palestinian state to be established in Saudi Arabia, are seen as widely destabilizing to Saudi Arabia’s regional ambitions and key allies.
Saudi Arabia does not want to see instability in Jordan and Egypt, two core pillars of its “moderate middle” bloc which also includes Saudi, UAE and Bahrain. It also does not want to see instability and violence on its wide Eastern desert borders with Jordan, which would also threaten the security of NEOM, the mega-city the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has plunged tens of billions of dollars into.
Jordan and Egypt have coordinated their stances with Saudi Arabia, and have relied on Riyadh issuing its strongest statements ever regarding Israel, Gaza and, indirectly, Trump, In separate statements, Saudi Arabia accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing in Gaza” and stated “the kingdom affirms that the Palestinian people have a right to their land and they are not intruder or immigrants to it who can be expelled whenever the brutal Israeli occupation wishes.”
The past few weeks alone may have slowed Israeli-Saudi normalization from a near-tern possibility into an unforeseeable far-future prospect.
Will Fear or Force Win Out?
This pits Jordan and Egypt in a battle of wills with President Trump.
Should leaders of both countries succeed in their personal diplomacy, we may see a climb down by Trump—dropping mentions of relocation of Gazans or downgrading America “own”ing Gaza into leasing it.
But should President Trump double down, we may soon see a suspension of American financial and military aid to Jordan and Egypt and, in turn, greater military mobilizations in both the Sinai and Jordan Valley.
After 16 months of the Middle East being changed by actors on the ground, the next decade may be decided by in-person meetings in Washington. Perhaps fittingly, the future Middle East may be shaped by the art of the deal.
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