Autocracy forces Jordan away from Saudi Arabia

As the Gulf crisis enters its second year, the Middle-East's increasingly autocratic landscape is turning countries like the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan towards Qatar and the Ikhwan.

The UAE's autocratic vision for the Middle-East has never looked stronger. In Egypt, Mohammed Morsi was overthrown and replaced by Abdul-Feteh As-Sisi in 2013. In 2014 Libyan strongman Haftar Al-Khalifa took control of the Libyan Army and set up a rival autocratic government in Tobruk. Since the start of the Yemen war, the UAE has been strengthening the Southern Movement under Aidarious Az-Zubaidi, to facilitate the fragmentation of Yemen into two states, with the southern state being autocratic and pro-UAE. Anti-autocratic Qatar has been boycotted by a significant number of its neighbours.

Yet the crown jewel to UAE's autocratic vision has been the support it has lended to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, which has set Saudi Arabia on the path to autocracy and away from political Islamism. Mohammed Bin Salman's reforms have allowed the UAE and Saudi Arabia to increasingly see eye-to-eye on a whole range of issues, including Iran, Qatar, Turkey - and even Israel.

Currently, there is a peace agreement being considered by Saudi Arabia and Israel. This peace agreement does not take into account the Palestinian diaspora that desperately desires to return home. There is no larger diaspora of Palestinians than in Jordan. For King Abdullah Hashemi to survive the political fallout of such a deal, seeking aid from Qatar, Saudi Arabia's most bitter Sunni enemy, is the only option.

Jordan has a significant portion of its population that is pro-Ikhwan, the staunch enemy of the Middle-East's autocrat block and politically closer to countries Qatar and Turkey. When other countries denounced the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorism, Jordan refrained. This has incentivised Jordan to take 1 billion dollars' aid from Qatar over and above the 1.5 billion dollars' aid offered by the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The two autocratic nations did not provide enough of a financial alternative for Jordan to feel inclined to upsetting its pro-Ikhwan population.

Should a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia come to fruition, it will have to face serious opposition from Qatar in the east as well as Jordan in the north, with both countries supported by Islamist giant Turkey. This, together with the unstable large countries Iraq and Yemen, does not pose well for the future of autocracy in Saudi Arabia.

In this case, it will be the Ikhwan countries which are better shielded from instability than the autocratic ones. By reaching across the aisle to Qatar, Jordan is saving itself from the likely fate of autocratic Saudi Arabia: instability, terrorism and perhaps even regime change.