Summer has been mild in Jordan, the American ally under renewed Iranian aerial strikes. Najwa Salem, a mother of two in Amman, wanted to take advantage of the weather.
This week, she called a relative who works at a beachfront hotel in the Red Sea city of Aqaba, a four-hour drive away, and asked him to book a room for them. His reply was “don’t come”, because missiles and interceptions could be heard all over the area.
“We didn’t go,” she said.
Iran resumed firing missiles and drones at the kingdom on July 9 as daily fighting with the US returned. This was despite a Pakistani-brokered agreement last month that was supposed to bolster a ceasefire between Tehran and Washington.
The resumption of the aerial war occurred as Jordanian authorities were hoping for an economic rebound. The economy has been stagnant since the 2008 financial crisis and has taken another hit from the war this year.
Regional interest in Jordan and the port of Aqaba as an alternative route to the Strait of Hormuz, had been expected to raise confidence in the country and attract foreign investment.
The US and other western powers are widely seen as invested in maintaining five decades of stability in Jordan, through providing financial and security assistance. They have sometimes sought to curb Israeli actions regarded as affecting Jordan’s cohesion.
A large proportion of the kingdom’s 11 million people are descendants of the Palestinian diaspora from the 1948 and 1967 wars.
The US and Europe have also underwritten large infrastructure projects, powered by solar energy and planned to start in Aqaba next year.
However, an EU-sponsored investment conference in Jordan has been postponed from the first half of this year to November. Western tourists, who were expected to return to Jordan following the April 8 ceasefire in the Iran war, seem unlikely to come back.
During the past two and a half weeks, dozens of Iranian projectiles have targeted the kingdom. There have been no Jordanian deaths or serious casualties recorded, but an Iranian attack on Sunday killed three American soldiers at an airbase in east Jordan, the first US deaths in the kingdom in the renewed war.
War arrives
Residents of Aqaba have reported hearing blasts. It was the first time that Aqaba, rather than the neighbouring Israeli city of Eilat, appeared to have been the target of fire.
An executive at a Jordanian company with business in the port city said that although Iran announced that US forces were the target of at least one of the attacks on Aqaba, Tehran may have a larger objective.
“Aqaba is very sensitive to Jordan. They wanted to send a message that they could sabotage investment and disrupt our trade,” the executive said.
Shipping costs for a container to Aqaba from East Asia rose from $1,500 to $6,000 at the beginning of the war, before falling after the April ceasefire. In the past two weeks, costs rose again to $6,000, according to a major Jordanian food importer.
“Shipping has been a nightmare,” said the importer, who also cited the rising costs of transferring containers by lorry from Dubai’s Jebel Ali and Jeddah. Jordanian importers have been increasingly using the two ports in reaction to Houthi threats against Red Sea shipping, which have escalated in the past week.
Tourism problems
On Wednesday, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency asked airlines to avoid Jordan until the end of August, citing “increase in kinetic military activity affecting Jordanian airspace”.
Khader Salem, a travel industry veteran, told The National that no major tour groups seem likely to come to Jordan for the high season, which runs from September to December. Tour operators, he said, read about the air raid sirens sounding in the country and “see nothing else”.
An escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza in recent weeks has contributed to the bearish outlook, said Mr Salem, founder and manager of Travel Harmony agency in Amman.
Revenue from tourism fell 9.2 per cent to $2.8 billion in the first five months of this year compared with the same period in 2025, according to official data. This figure includes spending by Jordanian expatriates, who are counted as tourists when they visit their homeland. Current hotel occupancy in Petra, the main destination of mass tourism, is four per cent.
Construction costs
Consumer price rises have been contained because of stiff competition in the market and traders' fear of losing customers, the importer said. Jordan’s official inflation rate at the end of the first half of 2026 has been steady at 2 per cent.
Rateb Al Rosan, a merchant specialising in building materials, said his costs have risen sharply. However, he and many others have obligations to the banks and need the cash flow, so they have been operating at the minimum of margins, he said.
An engineer who owns a contracting company said that the market for big projects had been hit by the increased perception of risk in Jordan from the continuing war. Most construction, he said, had been for apartment buildings, with developers eyeing expatriates as clients, as well as those with Jordanian passports who live in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli pressure has been building up. Official figures show that building permits rose 5.4 per cent in the first five months this year.
The total licensed areas have remained steady at four million square metres. “Overall demand is low,” the engineer said.
However, most of the economy has continued “to operate normally”, with some sectors “benefiting from stronger external demand and higher exports”, according to a June report by the International Monetary Fund.
A shipper in Aqaba said demand has started developing for the port following the Hormuz disruptions, particularly from Iraqi merchants hit by the closure of the strait. However, this has “created bottle necks” at the port and at the land border crossings with Iraq.
“The chain of logistics across the region is in turmoil,” the shipper said. “We are facing a vague, even unknown, future.”
