New York – King Abdullah II of Jordan claimed Sunday that Jordanian army forces have successfully fended off Islamic State fighters and secured the kingdom’s borders.
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Speaking during a ’60 Minutes’ interview, King Abdullah said though the extremist organization’s militants have threatened the kingdom, his army has responded aggressively. “We have retaliated to several contacts over the past several months to those who have come across our borders or tried to come across our borders. So we have been somewhat aggressive to make sure our borders are defended,” King Abdullah said in the interview.
Asked whether his borders were secured, the king stated, “Our borders are extremely secure.”
Having already been affected by the Syrian civil war in the form of 1.4 million Syrian refugees, Abdullah said Islamic State in Syria would now be more difficult to eradicate than in Iraq. He went on to say that Islamic State’s successes may have been prevented if the international community had mobilized more efficiently to block foreign support and financing.
Now the king says, “The difference with ISIS, I think, compared to any other organization, is that they are self financing. They can produce within a year, in a year cycle, up to almost a billion dollars worth of oil derivatives that they are obviously selling at a low price, about $30 barrel, which means they can pay a lot of foreign fighters to come to their country. They can buy weapons.”
The king of Jordan further expressed his belief that Islamic State and its leader did not represent Islam saying, “I hate to use the word “heretics,” whatever the words of those types are, but to even call himself a Muslim is to me just words that I don’t want to use on this program.”
Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post
The Jordanians are tough. They wiped out Black September, suppressed the PLO and followed their own course in the region. Never met one of their officers I didn’t like.
That should have read they crushed the PLO in Black September (1971). I blame my fat fingers.
Your excellency dear king of the hasemites- why are you permitted to secure your border and guard your country from terrorists but Israel cannot? Why are you ranting and raving about the wall or fence Israel erected? Where is the great peace make bank kee moon from the U.N.? Why no condemnation of jordan? Where is Israels public relations machine not voicing their story of this dichotomy?
Wait. Little Jordan fended off ISIS by itself? But Lindsay Graham and the other chickenhawks have told us that we’re all gonna die!!!! Maybe we should get the Jordanians to train our military to handle those 30,000 ISIS fighters so we’ll know what to do after they figure out how to get their jeeps and machine guns over to the continental U.S. to kill us all.
Jordan can handle ISIS and 40 countries cannot?
Maybe advertising what and when we are going to “do” it to ISIS is not such a good idea!! duh !!!
I didnt hear one peep how jordan was doing it to ISIS
when they were actually doing it.
Nice !!