Iranian Al Qods chief on landmark visit to Amman as guest of Jordan’s national intelligence director
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 9, 2015,
debkafile’s military and intelligence sources reveal exclusively that Gen. Qassem Soleiman, commander of the Revolutionary Guards elite Al Qods Brigades, paid a groundbreaking visit last Thursday, March 5, to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as guest of Gen. Faisal Al-Shoulbaki, director of General Intelligence and a close adviser to King Abdullah II. The visit, encouraged by Obama administration policy, showed one of America’s oldest Sunni Arab allies, recognizing the direction of the trending regional reality to jump the lines over to Tehran. Iran’s grab for Middle East influence is now reaching from four capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Sanaa, Beirut to a fifth, Amman.
Our sources report that Royal Jordanian Air Force fighter jets escorted the Iranian general’s armored motorcade as it drove from Baghdad to Amman through the main highway connecting the two Arab capitals. It is not known whether the king gave Soleimani an audience, but the possibility is not ruled out. His talks with Jordan’s intelligence and military heads ranged widely over the battles in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-ISIS. This suggests that Jordan has shown willingness to take the first step towards coordinating its policies and military operations with Tehran – not just with Washington as hitherto. Some 12,000 American soldiers are posted to Jordan, most of them members of elite US combat units. Their primary task is to safeguard the throne against threats from Syria and Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Interestingly, Soleimani’s landmark trip to Amman was carefully timed to take place just a day before Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Baghdad, so that by the time he landed, the Iranian general, who commands his coutry’s expanding military input in the war on ISIS, had returned to the Iraqi capital from his visit to Amman.
Our sources also report that the Jordanian king lately shows a different face in private conversations to his public aspect as steadfast friend of the Obama administration. In private, Abdullah is highly critical of current US policies in the region. In meetings with US lawmakers on visits to Amman, Abdullah has voiced bitter disappointment in President Barack Obama’s tepid response to the burning alive by ISIS of the Jordanian pilot Lt. Moath al-Kasasbeh.
He was on a visit to the White House when the horrific video was released on Feb. 3. The Jordanian king has been heard to remark that Obama’s military partnership with Iran, which has the effect of providing the Assad regime with an extra shield, cannot survive long, because the Sunni Arab world finds it intolerable and won’t accept it.
