In 2005, then-Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran became the most senior Arab official to visit Iraq since the invasion three years later Abdullah was the first Arab head of state to visit. Not surprisingly, therefore, Egypt and Jordan were among the first Arab states to build ties to the new Iraq following the 2003 U.S. King Hussein only very reluctantly broke with his long-time friend, Saddam, when Washington agreed to welcome Jordan back as a close ally. Jordan remained dependent on Iraqi oil, which it continued to receive with U.S. Iraq continued to be Egypt’s second biggest export market, under the U.N.

But even during the 1990s, while Iraq faced an onerous international sanctions regime, trade between it and Egypt and Jordan continued. The ACC had barely launched before it fell apart due to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The ACC was envisioned as a mechanism to increase trade among member states, as well as to facilitate labor movements, particularly from Egypt and Jordan to Iraq. Nevertheless, economic cooperation formed a central pillar of the formation. Saddam owed the Saudis billions of dollars in loans from the war, while Amman and Sana’a had longstanding concerns about Saudi expansionism and interference in their internal affairs. All wanted allies to balance against the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Saudi-led alliance of the six Gulf monarchies created during the war. Each had a political motive to forge the pact. Soon after the end of the war, the three countries, joined by North Yemen, formed the ACC. Egypt, meanwhile, saw more than one million of its citizens relocate to Iraq during the 1980s to fill jobs made vacant by the mass conscription of Iraqi men into the armed forces - so many that Iraq constituted Egypt’s largest source of remittances. King Hussein was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s closest ally at the time, visiting Baghdad often during the war. Jordan also received most of its own oil, highly subsidized, from Iraq.

Jordan became Iraq’s economic lifeline at that time, serving as a conduit for imports and oil exports through the port of Aqaba. Iraq’s close economic ties to Egypt and Jordan date to the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War. But then and now it has also had strategic goals. And in the longer term, the new partnership potentially heralds a far more ambitious project to bring together not just Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, but the countries of the Levant more broadly. Today, like 30 years ago, economic cooperation lies at the heart of the trilateral relationship. One commentator, not without reason, called it an alliance composed of the “ region’s odd fellows.” However, Iraq has historically had important economic relationships with both Egypt and Jordan, and in fact the three countries - along with North Yemen - came together in a very short-lived partnership called the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) from 1989 to 1990. Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and TechnologyĪt first glance, a partnership grouping together Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan appears rather strange.

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