As soon as the announcement was made, the angry comments started. During the meeting in Washington, the NATO announced the opening of the first liaison office in the Middle East, in Jordan.

“The establishment of a NATO liaison office in Amman is a natural progression of the long-standing relationship between the Alliance and Jordan,” the press release said, adding that the Jordan is a factor of stability “both regionally and globally”.

However, many did not deal with this development in a particularly positive way.

“Treason runs through their veins,” one user from Algeria wrote on Facebook. “How do you explain joining hands with those who are killing your brothers all over the world?”, “Jordan sold out without a single shot fired,” added another user, also Algerian. “Where are the free people of Jordan? Do they agree with this?” someone from Tunisia commented.

The idea of ​​establishing a NATO office in Amman has also fueled a number of conspiracy theories. Some claim that NATO now wants to get actively involved in fighting in Gaza and Lebanon – on behalf of Israel.

This is not the first time in recent months that Jordan has been the target of this kind of criticism. In April, after Iran launched missiles and drones at Israel, Jordan played a major role in repelling the attack.

Jordan said it was simply protecting its airspace, but many Jordanians disagreed with their country’s stance. One in five Jordanians, including the country’s queen, are of Palestinian descent – ​​and many stand with the Palestinians in their fight for recognition of a Palestinian state.

In reality, however, Jordan – where dissenting political voices are often suppressed by the royal family – maintains close ties with neighboring Israel, particularly in the area of ​​security, which is rarely mentioned within the country. In addition, it has been working with NATO and the US for decades on various military and defense issues.

The unpopular NATO

Despite its geographic proximity to Gaza, the new NATO liaison office in Amman will have no involvement in the conflict raging there, experts told DW.

“Despite the huge increase in violence in the region […] NATO’s decision was almost certainly planned long ago – and was not decided now as a reaction to the current conflicts,” Jonathan Panikoff of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program told DW. Discussions on the establishment of a NATO office in Amman had begun as early as July 2023, long before October 7 and the Hamas attack on Israel.

The war in Gaza likely accelerated the plans, according to Isabelle Wehrenfels, a senior fellow in the Africa and Middle East division at the Institute for International Affairs and Security. “But I don’t think that NATO has any desire to get closer to the war in the Middle East,” the expert told DW.

However, the new liaison office is not NATO’s first foray into the Middle East – the organization has long had various partnerships in the region.

The importance of Amman office

Despite the online outcry, how big of a deal is the NATO liaison office in Amman really?

From NATO’s perspective it can be seen as a major achievement, says H. A. Hellier, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It shows that NATO wants to emphasize that the world has changed, and is committed to working with partners in the Middle East.” Besides, “given that Russia also exerts influence in the region, NATO’s move makes sense.”

As Hellier adds, “a liaison office sets in motion a different mechanism and means that Jordan will have much more direct cooperation in various areas of common interest, such as crisis management, cyber security, climate change and elsewhere.”

From the region’s point of view, this is a “great symbolic agreement”, as both Wehrenfels and Panikov estimate. At the same time, however, it can develop even greater momentum in the future.

“NATO’s regional center in Kuwait has already united the countries in the region,” Wehrenfels points out. “Jordan is a fairly neutral territory in the Arab world. So I think the question is: how big will the Amman office get over time? And what interaction will there be with other regional players, particularly from North Africa? […] The people of the region do not like NATO in general, because they associate it with the interventions of the past. But at the same time I think the elites [των κρατών αυτών] they have an interest, for example, in making the armed forces more professional.”

According to a recent report, no Middle Eastern country wants immediate military intervention from NATO. However, the report also states that NATO could advance cooperation in the region by strengthening maritime security, assisting in arms controls and preparing states for climate change and other crises.

Ultimately, Panikov doubts whether Jordan is at risk of destabilization due to the establishment of the NATO liaison office: “For years, Jordan has been faced with too many economic and political issues, as well as security issues,” he explains to DW. And every new such issue that arises “constitutes a greater threat to the country than the partial strengthening of cooperation with NATO.”

Edited by: Giorgos Passas