Jordan officially banned the Muslim Brotherhood group this week just days after the authorities uncovered a plot by 16 militants to destabilise the country. Those arrested are members of the Brotherhood, and two of them previously served on the group’s Shura Council, a top decision-making body.
The militants are accused of acquiring explosives and manufacturing rockets and drones. While those weapons were supposed to be smuggled to Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions, Reuters reported that “some weapons found in Jordan this year were meant for use inside the country, not just to smuggle into the West Bank.”
Confessions by the suspects suggested that they were working with and getting money from foreign groups, possibly Hizbullah and Hamas, as some of them confessed they had received training in Lebanon.
This showed a level of danger that the Jordanian government could not accept. In announcing the group’s banning a week after the arrests, Jordanian Interior Minister Mazin Al-Farrayeh said that the country “could no longer ignore what the Brotherhood was doing” as some of its members were secretly working against national security.
The Brotherhood group denied the accusations while admitting that those arrested had links to it but had “acted in their own capacity.” It maintained what it has always publicly said – that the group is against violence.
Founded in Egypt in the 1920s as an Islamic political movement to counter the spread of secular and nationalist ideas, the Muslim Brotherhood then spread to other parts of the region. It works illegally as a clandestine organisation in many countries, but it had been officially licensed in Jordan since the country’s independence in 1946 as a charitable organisation when the Jordanian monarchy regarded it as a potential ally.
During the reign of the late King Hussein of Jordan, tensions between the group and the state would arise, especially when it tried to exploit economic difficulties against the government. When King Abdullah II came to the throne at the end of the last century, he became suspicious of the Brotherhood, saying in a 2013 interview that the Brotherhood was “run by wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
In 2015, the Jordanian government helped to orchestrate a split between the group’s so-called “hawks” and “doves,” allowing the latter to retain control of the group’s assets. In 2016, the government closed the offices of the group’s militant wing. In 2020, the Jordanian courts supported the government’s decision to dissolve the group because it had not officially registered.
Today, the Jordanian leadership sees the group as a “national threat,” with a Jordanian semi-official source, speaking on condition of anonymity, telling Al-Ahram Weekly that “the group has gone so far in testing the tolerance of the Jordanian leadership that it had crossed a ‘red line,’ being the stability and security of the country.”
Previous tensions between the Brotherhood and the state were generally socio-political, as the group had sought to exploit various circumstances in order to gain more power, he said. “But today it has been threatening the core foundations of the state.”
Though the Brotherhood group is now officially banned in Jordan, its political arm is still legally functioning as the main opposition in parliament. The Islamic Action Front (IAF) won the largest number of seats in last year’s elections, gaining 31 seats out of the 138 in the Jordanian legislature. The IAF has been involved in Jordanian politics since the inception of political parties in the country in 1992.
It is not yet clear what the banning of the parent group will mean for the IAF. Analysts are debating the issue, and some Western commentators have suggested that the government had become wary of the IAF owing to its success in the last elections when it had increased its MPs from 10 to becoming the largest opposition bloc.
Other commentators suggest that Jordan is coming under pressure from Israel, the US, and its Gulf allies, who vehemently oppose a radicalised Brotherhood and other similar groups.
However, a well-informed Jordanian source refuted the idea that the move was in response to foreign pressure, stressing that the main concern was “Jordan’s national security.”
Jordan’s position on the Palestinian issue is solid and unchanged, he said. “The King himself flew by helicopter to deliver aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, doing everything possible to end the war. Jordan stood up against evacuating the Gaza Strip of its population. No stone has been left unturned in efforts to stop the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank. But compromising the national security of the state cannot be allowed or tolerated.”
According to the US think-tank the Washington Institute, the IAF’s strong performance in the 2024 elections surprised Jordan’s top intelligence agency, indicating that support for the party had grown because of anger over the Gaza war, corruption, and joblessness.
The Israeli war on Gaza has changed the political mood in Jordan, he said. Since almost half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin, many people feel deeply connected to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. King Abdullah has tried to balance things, but it has been harder to do so as public anger grows.
The future of the IAF depends on the government’s decision to take action against the Brotherhood and the reaction of the group, according to senior fellow at the Washington Institute Ghaith Al-Omari in a commentary published on its website.
“The severity of the government’s reaction will depend on whether the investigation reveals more extensive Brotherhood organisational involvement and/or foreign connections. The balance of power within the Jordanian establishment will also shape the response, as will the Brotherhood’s reactions. The fact that the Royal Court has not yet commented on the incident indicates that decision makers are still mulling over their final course of action,” Al-Omari wrote.
Depending on the investigations and whether they uncover further Brotherhood involvement in the plot, and also how the group reacts, the future of the IAF will be decided. The government may seek to persuade Brotherhood-affiliated MPs to denounce the group, or it may dissolve the parliament and call for new elections without the IAF participating.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: