Next stop: Jordan

While Syria is still burning the Gulf States are already busy starting their next regime change project in Jordan. The developments until now:
- the Gulf states have stopped subsidies, resulting in a 3 billion government deficit.
- add to that the influx of 200,000 Syrian refugees
- So the government felt the need to rise the fuel prices, what was a nice excuse for protests.
- the Muslim Brotherhood has "expanded alliances with the extremists known as Salafists, unions and the loose-knit, largely secular protest movement known as the Hirak."
- Of course all the troublemakers claim to speak on behalf of "the people" and any concession the government makes is considered "not enough".

It looks like the Jordan king will pay a high price for the way he betrayed Syria.

In the mean time the smell of fear in the Arab world - that was already sensible when the Arab League accepted its resolutions against Gaddafi with many voting blank (obviously fearing that the Gulf States would target them next for regime change) - keeps rising.

Postscript: Today an article (In foiled Jordanian terror plot, officials see hand of resurgent al-Qaeda in Iraq) about a foiled Al Qaeda attack on the US embassy in Jordan: A Western intelligence official familiar with the Amman plot said most of the suspects had fought in Syria before returning to Jordan with new skills and a changed perspective toward their native country. [..] “They are real fighters,” the official said. “From Syria, they had weapons training and tactics. They were good at shooting, and they knew how to use complicated communications systems.” They also had another important advantage: easy access to the almost endless supply of weapons in Syria, where arms bound for rebel fighters arrive daily across the Turkish border. Cases of TNT, mortar shells, grenade launchers and even belt-fed machine guns were smuggled into Jordan for an attack that planners hoped would wreak havoc across the capital and lead to the collapse of the country’s Western-backed government. [..] To build the biggest bombs, the Jordanians received vital help from AQI, including a formula for enhancing the explosive power of ordinary TNT, the officials said. The instructions were passed via e-mails, and the key ingredients were delivered to a safe house in Syria.

This article (Al Nusra: Al Qaeda’s Syria Offensive) provides more details: Last October the Jordanian intelligence service foiled a plot based in Syria by al Qaeda to stage a mass-casualty terror attack in Amman that was apparently modeled on the 2008 attack by Pakistani terrorists on Mumbai, India. The attack would have begun with suicide bombers in two shopping malls in Amman; then, when the security forces rushed to deal with those, other attackers would attack the American embassy and other Western diplomats in the city.

Jordanian authorities believe that the planned attacks were scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the November 9, 2005, terrorist attacks in Amman, in which 60 people were killed and 115 injured in multiple hotel bombings. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks, citing its rejection of Jordan’s alliance with the United States and its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Jordanian intelligence said that group nicknamed its terror plot “9/11 the second” after the 2005 bombings. Among those arrested were two cousins of the Jordanian founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musaib al Zarqawi, who planned the 2005 attack.