MIDDLE EAST: Shifting Alignments

In the struggle for power in the Middle East, alignments were shifting.

Pivot of the shift was Jordan, which in nine years has been transformed from a quiet Bedouin kingdom to a turbulent and strife-torn nation dominated by Palestine Arabs. The crisis in Jordan was misleadingly billed by Arabs and Israelis alike as strictly an "internal" Jordanian affair. It was anything but that. Jordan is an artificial country carved out of the desert, and cannot live without support from somebody. Ever since the British abdicated, King Hussein's chaotic and impoverished kingdom has been open to every neighbor's intervention. During last fall's Sinai war, neighboring Arab states sent in forces to "protect" Jordan against possible Israeli attacks. At Mafrak, 3.000 Syrians are encamped, dedicated to the proposition that Jordan is rightly part of Greater Syria. Farther south, 5,500 Saudi troops occupy two points near Jericho, as well as the Aqaba area long claimed by Saudi Arabian kings as their own. Iraqi troops are massed along the eastern desert border. And Israel, with the most effective army of all, watches anxiously from the west.

Common Fear. In the Jordan showdown, army and Cabinet leftists were working for some sort of federation with Syria and Nasser's Egypt. But when the King moved against them, Iraq's King Feisal and Saudi Arabia's King Saud forgot their old rivalries to join in backing Hussein against any Syrian army intervention.

What unites the three kings is a common fear of the Communist influence that Nasser and the Syrian army extremists have brought into the Middle East by their arms deals. Within the past month both Saud and Feisal have heard ex-Congressman James Richards, President Eisenhower's special representative in the

Middle East (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), explain the new U.S. policy for opposing Middle East Communism, and have signed agreements under the U.S.'s emergency $200 million aid program. Hussein, who last week began a purge of Communist and pro-Egyptian elements from Jordan's army, schools and government offices, is convinced that only U.S. aid can save Jordan from the Nasser orbit and ultimate extinction. Last week his new Cabinet was debating whether to risk stirring up Jordan's street crowds by inviting Ambassador Richards to Amman.

Common Complaint. But if the three kings seemed to have cut loose from Nasser on East-West issues, they appeared bent on making it up to their brother Arab by re-emphasizing their solidarity against Israel. After the U.S. flag tanker Kern Hills, on Israeli charter, sailed through the Gulf of Aqaba to unload Iranian oil at the Israeli port of Elath, the Saudis informed U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold that they considered the gulf a closed Arab sea, and that if Israeli ships tried to pass they would "oppose" them. In rapid succession Iran, Iraq, Syria, and even the West's staunch friend Lebanon, registered their solidarity with Nasser over the gulf passageway.