The Israel Defense Forces has been altering its deployment on the border with Jordan due to concerns regarding Iran-sponsored terror attacks from the kingdom in 2024, according to Israel Hayom.
IDF Central Command is preparing for attempts by Hezbollah, or other pro-Iranian militias, to infiltrate the border and attack nearby communities, a military source told the Israeli daily.
Israel’s border with Jordan is its longest, stretching 190 miles. In the past two years, there has been a dramatic increase in arms smuggling from Jordan to the West Bank, and the IDF estimates that Iran is behind the shipments.
More than 1,000 different kinds of weapons have been interdicted along the border, including directional fragmentation anti-personnel mines (similar to a Claymore mine) manufactured in Iran. The IDF knows that only some of the smuggling attempts are foiled. This partially explains the rise in terror attacks and the availability of weapons in Judea and Samaria over the past two years.
The shift to a “hot border” has been an ever-increasing challenge for the Hashemite Kingdom in recent months. Iran-backed forces have tried to infiltrate Jordan from both Iraq and Syria, undermining the kingdom’s sovereignty. The Jordanians, for their part, are making great efforts to stop the infiltrators.
An especially serious attack occurred some two weeks ago, which according to a statement by the Jordanian army “lasted 14 hours, and large quantities of weapons, rockets and various firearms were seized.”
In that same incident, a Jordanian F-16 fighter jet was even used to repel the infiltrators’
The IDF maintains contact with the Jordanian army to jointly combat these developments.
In recent weeks, Israeli residents in the Jordan Valley have reported frequent sounds of shooting from the border area. Social media has even featured videos documenting the sounds, from Ashdot Ya’akov and the surrounding area.
The IDF is not concerned about the possibility of the Jordanian army turning its weapons against Israel, but the conventional wisdom is that there could be rogue soldiers who open fire, as has happened in the past. (In 1997 a Jordanian soldier murdered seven Israeli schoolgirls and wounded four more, as well as a teacher, an event called “the Island of Peace massacre”). However, the IDF is preparing for an equally severe scenario in which Iranian militias succeed in infiltrating Jordan, and subsequently attack Israel from there.
Originally published by Israel Hayom.