Jordan’s King Visits the White House

Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy

This Newlines Institute Contours podcast assesses state resilience and fragility in Jordan and the future of the U.S.-Jordanian relationship. Newlines Institute Senior Analyst and Contours host Nicholas Heras sits down with Suha Ma’ayeh, Rana Sweis, and Dr. Curtis R. Ryan to discuss why King Abdullah II’s upcoming visit to the White House to meet President Joe Biden is such a high-stakes meeting for the future of Middle East stability and security. Suha Ma’ayeh is a Jordanian freelance journalist and researcher based in Amman. She has written extensively on domestic politics, Arab spring protests, foreign affairs, terrorism, elections, and corruption, including the crisis in southern Syria and the influx of refugees, for the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. Rana Sweis is a Jordanian journalist and researcher covering political, social and refugee issues in the Middle East, most often for The New York Times, and the founder and managing director of Wishbox Media. She is the author of “Voice of Jordan,” a book that tells the story of Jordan through the lives of ordinary people, including an Iraqi political cartoonist, a Syrian refugee, a female parliamentarian and others. Dr. Curtis R. Ryan is a Professor of Political Science at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. He has written extensively on Jordan's domestic and international politics and is the author of three books on Jordan, most recently, “Jordan and the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Politics Beyond the State.”