Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
1/15/2016
The United States and Jordan signed an agreement Monday to work together to combat nuclear terrorism, the State Department announced. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Judeh signed the Joint Action Plan “to improve efforts against nuclear and radiological smuggling,” the State Department said. The plan seeks to strengthen border security, laws, and cooperation among domestic agencies in Jordan and “expresses the intention of the two governments to work together to enhance Jordan’s capabilities to prevent, detect, and respond to nuclear smuggling incidents,” it said.
The U.S. is concerned that dangerous nuclear and radioactive materials “may still remain on the black market and need to be recovered before they fall into the wrong hands,” according to a State Department fact sheet. The U.S. seeks to address this risk by partnering with nations like Jordan, which in the past two years has hosted two multilateral workshops on countering nuclear smuggling, the State Department said. The U.S. has signed similar agreements with 13 other international partners, including Tajikistan in 2011, Lithuania in 2013, and Iraq in 2014.
Jordan introduced a statement on the topic during the 2012 and 2014 Nuclear Security Summits that was signed by “as many as 20 countries,” and will do so again at the 2016 summit in Washington, D.C., the State Department said. It added that “today’s signing reflects the common conviction of the United States and Jordanian governments that nuclear smuggling is a critical and ongoing global threat that requires a coordinated, global response.” Jordan is one of 86 nations participating in the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, an international partnership co-chaired by the U.S. and Russia that hosts multilateral capacity building activities to prevent nuclear terrorism.
A State Department fact sheet on U.S.-Jordanian security cooperation noted that the U.S. has assisted Jordan with its security efforts since the 1960s, particularly by “building capacity of the Jordan Armed Forces (JAF) to counter threats in the region.” A memorandum of understanding signed last February “reflects the U.S. intent to provide up to $1 billion per year in bilateral economic and security assistance,” it said, adding that the U.S. is providing equipment and training to the JAF to counter transnational threats and is helping complete work on “an integrated border security surveillance, detection, and interdiction system along Jordan’s land borders.”
