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Why Abdullah Is King of Jordan

(American Interest) Robert Satloff - After 21 years on the throne, Jordan's King Abdullah is at the height of his popularity. Yet some whisperers in Amman still say his reign was illegitimate. I met Abdullah's father, King Hussein, for the first time in 1989 in Amman while doing research for my doctoral dissertation on Jordanian domestic politics in the 1950s, and we met for the last time in 1996 in Potomac, Maryland. I asked Hussein what he considered his greatest regret. He replied, "My greatest regret is the terrible injury I did to my son, Abdullah....I vow that before I die, I will repair this. I will correct what I did." Abdullah, born in 1962, was Jordan's crown prince until he was three years old, when advisors convinced the king that it was too dangerous to have a toddler as heir when there were so many threats on the king's life. So he named as crown prince his youngest brother, Hassan, who was 18. Hassan loyally served as crown prince to King Hussein for 30 years. But the king told me that he planned to change the order of royal succession and restore his eldest son to the role of future king, which he did just two weeks before his death. There were those in Amman who claimed this was a mercurial decision influenced by the heavy medication he was taking for the pain of his advanced cancer. But from my own conversation with Hussein nearly three years before his death, I knew these claims were wrong. The writer is executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2020-05-04 00:00:00
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