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As Israel continues to brace itself under the threat of an imminent attack from Iran or its proxy forces, including Hamas and Hezbollah, security experts are sounding the alarm that Tehran has its sites set on Jordan as its next great “terror front.”

“Jordan is the last holdout,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran expert and senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) told Fox News Digital. “It’s the last bastion of the pro-Western or status quo order in the heartland of the northern part of the Middle East.”

The security expert pointed to Iran’s growing influence and support for proxy fighters not only in Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, but further out across the Arabian Peninsula, including Yemen and Oman, where anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise. 

“Increasingly, the regime has benefited from the rise in anti-Israel sentiment to cause instability in Jordan,” Ben Taleblu said.

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Growing concern over how Tehran will use anti-Israeli sentiment in the Middle East coincided with a warning issued Monday by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who said Iran was working “to establish a new eastern terror front against Israel’s major population centers.”

The Israeli official said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is coordinating with “Hamas operatives in Lebanon to smuggle weapons and funds into Jordan” with the apparent aim of destabilizing the Israeli neighbor. 

Katz said smuggled arms are transported across Jordan’s western border into the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, with a particular focus on refugee camps and the goal of establishing pro-Iranian sentiment as it has done in areas like Gaza and southern Lebanon. 

“The Iranian axis of evil today effectively controls refugee camps in Judea and Samaria through its proxies, leaving the Palestinian Authority powerless to act,” Katz added. 

Locator map of Israel and the Palestinian Territories. (AP Photo)

Jordan’s border with Israel is the Jewish state’s longest shared border, reportedly stretching some 300 miles from the contested Golan Heights in the north, through the Palestinian West Bank and the Dead Sea, before ending at the Gulf of Aqaba.

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Though Katz’s warnings come as tensions between Israel and Iran have reached a historic peak, local reporting shows that Iranian-led smuggling efforts have plagued Jordanian security efforts for years.

The Jordanian regime over the last half decade has increasingly been working to stop smuggling operations to help prevent the formation of anti-Israel terrorist cells in the West Bank. 

Hundreds of people gather to follow the speech of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, on a screen, in Beirut, Lebanon on Nov. 3, 2023. (Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Ultimately [that would] be a benefit to the Islamic Republic, because it could allow for a full encirclement of Israel,” Ben Taleblu said.  “The one thing that stands in the way of all of this is the Jordanian monarchy and the strength of the Jordanian security services.”

Jordanian officials have been working to ease tensions in the region by meeting with U.S., Israeli and Iranian officials over recent weeks following Tehran’s threat to hit the Jewish state directly.

Though even as Jordan works to maintain the status quo in the region and prevent an all-out war, it has also warned it will not become a battleground state for either nation to utilize. 

A soldier attaches an Israeli flag to an armored personnel carriers near the border with Gaza, in southern Israel, April 15, 2024.

“We will not be a battlefield for Iran or Israel. We informed the Iranians and the Israelis that we will not allow anyone to violate our airspace and risk the safety of our citizens,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in a Saturday interview, according to a Reuters report. 

“We will intercept anything that passes through our airspace or think that it constitutes a threat to us or our citizens,” he added.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio police officer was indicted Tuesday on charges including murder in the shooting of Ta’Kiya Young, a 21-year-old pregnant Black mother killed by police in a grocery store parking lot last August.

A Franklin County grand jury indicted Blendon Township police officer officer Connor Grubb on charges of murder, involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault.

Young was suspected of shoplifting when Grubb and a fellow officer approached her car. The other officer ordered her out. Instead, she rolled forward toward Grubb, who fired a single bullet through her windshield into her chest. The daughter she was expecting three months later also died.

Court records did not list an attorney for Grubb. A message seeking comment was left with Blendon Township police.

Young’s family members called for the officer to be charged shortly after the Aug. 24 shooting. After viewing bodycam footage showing the officer firing the gun, the family called his actions a “gross misuse of power and authority,” especially given that Young had been accused of a relatively minor crime.

In the video, an officer at the driver’s side window tells Young she’s been accused of shoplifting and orders her out of the car. Young protests, both officers curse at her and yell at her to get out, and Young can be heard asking them, “Are you going to shoot me?”

Seconds later, she turns the steering wheel to the right, the car rolls slowly forward and Grubb fires his gun. Moments later, after the car comes to a stop against the building, they break the driver’s side window. Police said they tried to save her life, but she was mortally wounded.

The encounter between Young and police was among a troubling series of fatal shootings of Black adults and children by Ohio officers, and followed various episodes of police brutality against Black people across the nation over the past several years.