On March 1, Jordanian authorities announced that they had thwarted an attack on ?a vital, civil facility? in Jordan and had arrested a Libyan and two Iraqis in connection with the planned attacks. Shortly after, the arrest of a third Iraqi was announced. Two other Iraqis and a Saudi are still wanted in connection with the plot, and Jordan has said that the fugitives are thought to have fled to an unspecified neighboring country.
The Libyan was supposedly a suicide bomber in the plot, for which two of the captured Iraqis provided logistical support. Members of the cell are thought to be members of Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi?s network, al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers . Zarqawi?s reach is truly multinational, making the composition of this terrorist cell consistent with what has come to be expected from him. He seems to have steered away from using Jordanians in such plots, as this seems to make cells more susceptible to interception. This is also not the first time that Zarqawi?s network has worked with Libyans, as it was a Libyan who carried out the execution of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in 2002 .
Jordan has not yet announced the intended target(s) of the attack. The Jordanian daily Al-Ghad has reported that the attack plans were similar to the Amman hotel attacks of November 9 that employed the use of four Iraqis. Jordanian security officials have said that four kilograms of explosives, in addition to RPGs and automatic weapons, have been confiscated in connection with the attack. The explosives are the same kind used in the Amman hotel attacks: the powerful military explosive, RDX.
With the paltry amount of information released by Jordan so far, the nature of the attacks can only be speculated, extrapolated from previous Zarqawi-linked plots. The suicide belts used in the Amman hotel attacks held 5-10 kilograms of the explosive a piece. If this plot was to rival previous ones by Zarqawi?s network, then it is possible that the four kilograms of RDX is not all that was planned to be used in the attack. The RPGs and automatic weapons could have been intended for use in a breaching operation?similar to how suicide bombers during the recent Abqaiq facility attack in Saudi Arabia were accompanied by gunmen to help them break in. Such support could be designed to thwart a situation like that during the hotel bombings when hotel security at one of the targets was able to keep a bomber from entering.
Terrorists acting in connection with, or on the orders from, Zarqawi have targeted Jordan more than any other country outside of Iraq . In addition to Zarqawi?s long held personal enmity for the Jordanian regime, Jordan fits snugly into the crosshairs of both the global al-Qaeda organization and the larger Iraqi insurgency for its close relationship with the United States , its cooperation with Israel , and its use as a base of support for Coalition efforts in Iraq. There is not likely to be a shortage of suicide bombers willing to carry out attacks against the Jordanian government. Indeed, Jordanian authorities have thwarted ?several? terrorist plots since the beginning of 2005 (Intel Report and Intel Report), according to a Jordanian security source quoted in Al-Ghad.
Terrorists, especially those dispatched from Zarqawi?s network, can be expected to continue to attempt to attack the Jordanian government and foreign interests in Jordan with plots designed to kill at least several dozen people, likely by suicide missions carried out largely by non-Jordanian cells with connections to Iraq. Until the Jordanians reveal what the intended target of this latest attack was, it will be unknown whether the backlash against targeting Muslim civilians, which followed the Amman attack, has been taken into consideration with regards to targeting. The choice to target a ?vital civil facility? could be a response to this, as an attack on civil infrastructure would be felt by Jordanian civilians but, depending on the target, may not kill so many. Jordan has not alluded to any targets other than this unnamed facility, although previous al-Qaeda plots in the Kingdom have also targeted more than one location at a time.
