His Majesty King Abdullah’s address before the United Nations General Assembly last week came at an exceptionally delicate regional moment—not only because of the continuing Palestinian tragedy, but also because the Middle East itself is undergoing a reshaping of the balance of power that has defined the region over recent years.

 

Therefore, reading the speech merely as another Jordanian position on Gaza and the West Bank, notwithstanding the centrality of the Palestinian cause to it, does not fully capture the message the King carried from New York.

 

The speech began with Palestine, but it did not stop there. It moved from Gaza and the West Bank, and from the selective application of international law, to an issue perhaps more directly connected to Jordan’s national security: Syria, the northern border, water security, and a potential shift in the nature of the regional threat.

 

His Majesty stated unequivocally that “the expansionist ambitions of this Israeli government have become a regional threat,” and that Syria has become “a warning the international community chooses not to heed.” He spoke of incursions and the imposition of new facts on the ground, including those affecting vital water resources. He then placed the matter squarely within the framework of Jordanian national security: “Any threat to our northern border or our water security is a threat to our national security.”

 

These statements deserve to be read beyond the framework of the traditional political dispute between Jordan and Israel.

 

Over the past two decades, a significant part of regional strategic thinking has centred on the expansion of Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, followed by the threat posed by terrorist organisations and the disorder accompanying the weakening of state institutions in several Arab countries. Today, however, the landscape has changed: Iranian influence has receded, particularly following the war against Iran; the Assad regime has fallen; and a new question has emerged: who will fill the resulting regional vacuum, and in what manner?

 

This very issue has been picked up by media and analytical circles inside Israel, most notably in a striking analysis by Israeli analyst Seth J. Frantzman in The Jerusalem Post following the King’s speech. He argued that Jordanian criticism this time differs from the familiar criticism concerning Gaza or the West Bank because it has now become a matter of “regional strategy.” He also situated the positions of Jordan, alongside Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, within a broader concern that Israel may move to fill the vacuum created by Iran’s decline and the transformation of the Syrian landscape. This is, of course, an analytical reading rather than an official or collective position of those states, but it is nevertheless worthy of attention.

 

The issue, however, may run deeper than a mere change in how the countries of the region perceive Israel. What we are witnessing today in terms of Israeli expansionist policies and the increasing use of force beyond its borders can be read as an indication that Israel is seeking to occupy part of the strategic vacuum that emerged following the decline of Iranian influence, the fall of the Assad regime, and the diminishing influence of Tehran-aligned forces across several arenas in the region.

 

The strategic paradox here deserves particular attention. For years, Iranian expansion was one of the principal sources of disruption to the regional security order: influence extending across borders, armed proxies, intervention in weaker states, and exploitation of the vacuums created by the weakness of the nation-state. The concern today is that the retreat of that project, instead of allowing for the reconstruction of a regional balance based on state sovereignty and stability, could give rise to another power project that similarly seeks to fill the vacuum and impose new realities through force.

 

If Israel follows this path, it risks assuming within the regional security equation the same position previously occupied by Iran: a power seeking to expand its sphere of influence by taking advantage of the weakness of surrounding states. In doing so, it could shift from being viewed by some countries in the region as a potential partner in confronting the Iranian threat to becoming a new principal source of regional imbalance and concern - and indeed, the very core of the problem threatening the regional security order in the future.

 

For Jordan, this is not a theoretical question. It directly touches upon the essence of Jordan’s national and broader Arab interests: Syria’s stability and territorial integrity, the security of Jordan’s northern border, water security, stability in the West Bank, and preventing the emergence of new security vacuums or spheres of influence on the Kingdom’s doorstep.

 

Jordan has no interest in a weak or fragmented Syria, nor in a permanent security vacuum along its northern border. Jordan has already borne a substantial cost from years of Syrian instability: refugees, the smuggling of drugs and weapons, networks linked to militias and external powers, and the risks of organised crime and extremism. A stable and unified Syrian state capable of exercising sovereignty throughout its territory is therefore not an ideological Jordanian position; it is a direct national interest.

 

This is where an important divergence emerges in approaches towards southern Syria. While Jordan views stability in the south and the restoration of the Syrian state’s ability to administer its territory as essential to the security of its borders, Israel is pursuing different security arrangements, including the demilitarisation of areas in the south, and has intervened militarily inside Syria.

 

The deeper question, therefore, is this: Is sustainable regional security built upon stable states capable of exercising their sovereignty, or upon keeping neighbouring states weak and fragmented?

 

It is in this context that the King’s declaration that “Jordan will not look the other way” assumes its full strategic significance. Jordan, which previously rejected the transformation of its borders and surrounding region into an arena for Iranian influence and its militias, cannot be expected to accept the replacement of one dominant regional influence with another, irrespective of its identity.

 

Jordan’s interest does not lie in replacing Iran with Israel in the equation of regional hegemony. Rather, it lies in the emergence of a stable region governed by sovereign states, protected borders and international rules that apply equally to all.

 

This also gives the Jordanian message additional weight. Jordan is not a state that has built its foreign policy over the past three decades around confrontation with Israel. The Kingdom has been at peace with Israel since 1994, has maintained that treaty despite severe crises, has consistently supported the two-state solution, and has built its international relations around moderation and close partnership with the United States and Europe.

 

Therefore, when a state at peace with Israel warns that Israeli conduct is beginning to affect its national security, this should not be read merely as an extension of the traditional Arab position on the conflict.

 

The King’s reference to water takes the issue from geopolitics directly into the heart of Jordan’s national interest. For Jordan, water is not a secondary negotiating issue. Any change in the geographical or security environment surrounding its water resources becomes a matter of national security. It is therefore significant that the King’s affirmation that Jordan would not look the other way came after an explicit reference to borders, water and the interests of the Jordanian people.

 

Yet reading the Syrian and broader regional dimensions of the speech does not mean separating Syria from Palestine. Quite the opposite.

 

The King built his speech around an interconnected idea: the international community has grown accustomed to treating realities that were supposedly temporary until they became permanent policy. What has happened in Gaza and the West Bank demonstrates the danger of allowing facts to be imposed on the ground and then attempting to deal with them only after they have become an established reality.

 

Here lies the strength of the political architecture of the speech: the warning that the approach the world allowed to become entrenched in Palestine may not remain confined to Palestine.

 

Perhaps one important indication that this message has registered is that an Israeli analysis of the speech did not read it simply as yet another address about Palestine, but rather as an expression of a broader shift in the balance of power in the Middle East.

 

Syria, therefore, is not a departure from the Palestinian issue in the King’s speech. Rather, it is a warning that what the world has allowed to happen in Palestine may have consequences that extend far beyond Palestine.

 

Jordan remains committed to peace, but it does not equate peace with silence. Its interest does not lie in seeing the centre of regional hegemony shift from Tehran to Tel Aviv, but in building a Middle East that does not need a hegemonic power in the first place: stable sovereign states, a viable Palestine, a unified Syria, secure borders, and international law applied equally to all.

 

This, ultimately, was the significance of the King’s warning from New York: Jordan will not look the other way when an imbalance in the regional order becomes a direct threat to its security, its water and the interests of its people. And the time to prevent a new disruption of the regional security equation is before it once again transforms from a temporary reality into a permanent one.

 

Ahmad Khalaf Masa’deh, Attorney-at-Law, former Minister for Public Sector Reform and former Ambassador of Jordan to the European Union and Belgium