Special to WorldTribune.com

AMMAN — The United States envisions a long-term military presence in Jordan.

Officials said the administration of President Barack Obama was preparing to maintain or expand the U.S. military presence in Jordan.

The officials said the U.S. presence, comprised of the Army’s 1st Armored Division, would help protect Jordan from the Islamist revolt in neighboring Syria.

“I think we’re probably talking about several years, and therefore several rotations [of troops],” U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.

Officials said Dempsey, who visited Jordan in mid-August, focused on arms exports to and U.S. military deployment in Jordan. They said the U.S.
military maintains about 1,000 troops in Jordan, many of them along the 370-kilometer northern border with Syria.

“The follow-on challenge will be ensuring that they have a capability to defeat what will likely be a terrorist threat that will spill over at some
point,” Dempsey said. “I’m not predicting that. But it’s certainly a
possibility, and it’s one that they feel.”

Jordan has relayed a shopping list of weapons and defense equipment to
the United States. Officials said the list included unmanned aerial vehicles
and reconnaissance systems. In 2013, Washington transferred about 12 F-16
multi-role fighters as well as an unspecified amount of PAC-3 air and
missile defense batteries to the Hashemite kingdom.

In a meeting with U.S. troops in Amman on Aug. 15, Dempsey said Jordan
could be under Islamist threat from Syria and other countries for years to
come. The general cited the influx of nearly 600,000 Syrians into Jordan
over the last two years, most of them fleeing the civil war.

“We haven’t actually put an end-date on it [U.S. withdrawal] for that
very reason — because it will depend how the situation evolves in Syria,”
Dempsey said. “It will also depend on how our Jordanian counterparts feel about their ability to deal with these issues themselves.”

  1st Armored Division, F-16 multi-role fighters, Gen. Martin Dempsey, U.S. now sees deployment in Jordan lasting ‘several years’