426 • 21 THE WAR ON TERRORISMThe regime's success has so far averted any terrorist threat within Jordan.
The king since 1999, Abdallah II, still appoints the prime minister and
other ministers, as well as half the senators, and can dissolve parliament or
delay its elections, but he has not abused his powers.
Iraq is the Arab state at the vortex of the Middle East crisis. Despite
the Ba'th Party's despotic rule from 1968 to 2003, the country was, until
the US invasion, among the most modern in the Arab world. Its popula¬
tion was well educated, and it had a large professional middle class. Be¬
cause it was also well armed, Iraq was viewed by many other Arabs as the
country most likely to stand up to Israel or indeed the US. Meanwhile,
Saddam's regime was condemned by the Americans and some Europeans
as a military dictatorship that invaded its neighbors, murdered political
dissidents by the thousands, killed some of its Kurdish citizens with poi¬
son gas, and hoped to retain or to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, before its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the US, USSR, and some
European countries had sold arms to Saddam's Iraq. The seed stock for
Saddam's biological weapons program came from the US under govern¬
ment license. American satellite technology helped provide the targeting
information for conventional and poison gas attacks against the Iranians
during the Iran-Iraq War.
After the 1991 Gulf War, though, both the Clinton and Bush administra¬
tions maintained the UN-imposed sanctions against Iraq, which crippled
its economy and cost more than a half-million lives. They sought to isolate
it, accusing Saddam of encouraging acts of terrorism against Israel and the
US, for he boasted of his ability to strike at Israel with Scud missiles and
publicly gave money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Ameri¬
cans accused Iraq of harboring terrorists tied to al-Qa'ida and of facilitat¬
ing the 9/11 attacks. The outcome of these accusations, which remain
unproven, was the Iraq War, which we discuss later in this chapter. The
other Arab countries, and such European states as France, Germany, and
Russia, drew closer to Saddam's Iraq, defied the sanctions, and opposed any
military action.
Saudi Arabia and the Other Gulf States
The Saudi kingdom is often singled out by both friends and foes as a major
US ally and trading partner. Strictly speaking, there is no formal alliance
between the two countries, but thousands of US troops were stationed in
Saudi Arabia from 1990 to 2003, and many Saudis have received advanced
military training in the US. Direct US participation in the management of
Saudi oil has decreased since the Saudi government bought out the Arabian