Jordan’s regional connectivity begins in Riyadh
As the economic consequences of the Iran war spread across the Middle East, Jordan will be both a casualty and a potential source of resilience.
Jordan’s strategic geography positions it as a natural node in emerging trade corridor initiatives designed to revitalize regional economic cooperation and develop new, more effective routes for the movement of goods and commodities. If Jordan and its partners can leverage this opportunity, they could also provide a critical lifeline for Jordan as it seeks to reduce its dependence on US and other foreign aid. But so far, the country and its partners have struggled to achieve any meaningful connectivity, despite committing to doing so in rhetoric.
Jordan cannot anchor its economic ambitions on international promises that may not come to fruition. It must take the lead in making economic interconnectivity a reality with its closest regional partners first—and then scale outward as the broader international community catches up.
For Jordan, that strategic partner is Saudi Arabia. For decades, Saudi Arabia has provided Jordan aid, budget support, and central bank deposits; meanwhile, Jordan has provided strategic stability on Saudi Arabia’s northwestern flank. But now, something more structural is taking shape. Saudi investments in Jordan now exceed fifteen billion dollars, including three billion dollars channeled through the Saudi Jordanian Investment Fund—a vehicle backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Bilateral trade is accelerating, with Jordanian exports to Saudi Arabia rising 19 percent in the first half of 2025 in comparison to the same period in 2024. At the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh last October, the two kingdoms signed an amended investment protection agreement and a memorandum of understanding linking Jordan’s Ministry of Investment with the Saudi Economic Cities and Special Zones Authority.
Jordan’s path to becoming a regional connectivity hub begins in Riyadh. Saudi capital is the necessary first mover that can unlock Jordan’s potential as a node for a new corridor, one extending northward into a reconstructing Syria, westward toward the Mediterranean, and then onward to Europe.
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Corridors as stability architecture
Across the region, connectivity projects are emerging as instruments of stability. The Middle Corridor through the South Caucasus has demonstrated that trade infrastructure can incentivize political restraint, binding states with unresolved disputes into shared economic stakes.
The Levant needs a similar framework. Syria’s reconstruction will cost an estimated $216 billion, and its president told investors at the Future Investment Initiative that Syria could become “a vital trade corridor” between east and west. Saudi Arabia pledged over six billion dollars in investments for post-Assad Syria in 2025. But the materials necessary for rebuilding the country need a way to enter. Jordan is the only stable overland corridor between the Gulf and Syria with functioning border infrastructure and working relationships with every relevant party. However, Jordan still lacks the rail and logistics backbone to make that position permanent.
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) was designed to address this connectivity gap, but it has grown politically complicated since the war in Gaza, since its original route went through Israel and since popular pressure on Arab states to reduce normalization ties has grown. The vision remains sound—a multimodal corridor connecting Gulf capital and energy to the Mediterranean and European markets. It also fits the existing commercial logic. Non-oil trade between the European Union and Saudi Arabia reached nearly €42 billion in 2024 (at that time, around $45 billion). Such trade largely included machinery, chemicals, and manufactured goods that move through the Red Sea, which has been under pressure from Houthi attacks since late 2023.
Now, with the Iran war disrupting the Strait of Hormuz, entities moving high-value, time-sensitive freight are seeking overland routes. With Syria’s post-Assad opening and Saudi reconstruction financing flowing northward, a viable corridor could run through Jordan.
The infrastructure reality
The Saudi Jordanian Investment Fund portfolio gives a glimpse at this corridor’s potential: a $400 million healthcare project in Amman, sixteen Saudi projects across Jordan’s industrial cities, and a memorandum of understanding to invest 500 million Jordanian dinars (around $700 million) in a railway connecting the Jordanian cities of Aqaba and Ma’an. But the railway stalled after five years of attempts. In 2024, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) effectively replaced Saudi Arabia as lead investor, when Etihad Rail signed a $2.3 billion agreement to build and operate a 360-kilometer freight line linking Jordanian mining operations at Al-Shidiya and Ghor Al-Safi to the shipping terminal in Aqaba, with operations targeted for 2030. But the railway project—in its previous and current form—covers only the southern segment of the corridor. Connectivity to Amman, a stretch that would make the railway a national transit spine, remains without an investor.
Turkey announced its plan to restore the Hejaz Railway through Syria, rebuilding thirty kilometers of destroyed track and targeting reconnection by 2026, with the long-term objective of connecting Amman to Istanbul via Damascus. Turkish firms have locked in over eleven billion dollars in Syrian contracts, and Turkish exports to Syria surged 54 percent in early 2025. Additionally, a Turkey-Syria transit agreement signed last year ended the requirement to unload and reload cargo at the Syrian border, allowing sealed Turkish trucks to cross through Syria to reach Jordan and the Gulf. This arrangement is complemented by a parallel Jordan-Syria agreement easing truck passage at the Nasib-Jaber crossing.
These measures are steps forward for regional connectivity. But, notably, the Hejaz Railway may not immediately include freight. Additionally, it does not, on its own, link Jordan to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, or the Gulf because significant infrastructure upgrades inside Jordan remain unbuilt.
But the UAE and Saudi Arabia are assembling the key pieces on either side of Jordan. The UAE’s DP World has invested $800 million in Syria’s Port of Tartous, located north of Lebanon, but that investment needs rail connectivity through Syria and into Jordan to play a role in a viable corridor. Saudi Arabia also launched a 1,700-kilometer freight corridor linking its eastern ports to the Al-Haditha crossing with Jordan, each train capable of carrying over four hundred containers at half the transit time of road freight. But the rail ends at Jordan’s border.
Until Jordan builds the connecting infrastructure from Al-Haditha to the northern corridor, the kingdom’s trucking industry will need to fill the gap. This is not the ideal scenario, but it can work in the near term. Since December 2023, the United Nations Logistics Cluster has facilitated over 127 humanitarian convoys through Jordan, dispatching more than 1,850 trucks carrying over eighteen thousand metric tons of aid to Gaza while processing government-to-government convoys on a weekly basis. Experience with that type of high-volume, cross-border movement under wartime constraints could transfer directly to commercial corridor operations.
Jordan’s reform imperative
Jordan’s value proposition as a node in a critical corridor depends on making overland transit as frictionless as possible—fundamentally a regulatory challenge, not an infrastructure one.
The International Monetary Fund and the US State Department’s Investment Climate Statements have flagged the same structural problems year after year, namely bureaucratic inefficiency, inconsistent policy implementation, and high operating costs driven by Jordan’s reliance on energy imports and its water scarcity. US investors point to challenges such as instability in the tax regime and in incentive packages, alongside the government’s inconsistent interpretation of its own policies and regulations. Restrictions on foreign ownership, judicial backlogs, and slow license processing further constrain Jordan’s potential—potential which is backed by its large youth population and highly educated workforce.
If Amman wants to capitalize on its position, it must move on several fronts. It needs a fast-track permitting regime for corridor infrastructure projects which could, for example, offer transit and logistics investments the same streamlined licensing, customs pre-clearance, and one-stop regulatory windows that Aqaba’s special economic zone offers. Jordan should develop a dedicated land port facility at its northern border or put its existing free trade zone with Syria to work as a genuine transit hub.
Jordan and Syria should also harmonize their customs procedures—an effort already under discussion through the Joint Technical Committee for Land Transport—with an eye on improving digital interoperability: for example, by implementing shared manifests, establishing common pre-clearance protocols, and automating processing at border crossings. Additionally, Jordan should codify its tax incentives for corridor investments with fixed rates, set durations, and clear eligibility criteria, instead of leaving them open to minister discretion, which is subject to change from one government to the next. Investors are less likely to commit capital to twenty-year infrastructure projects when a new cabinet can rewrite the incentive structure overnight and with little warning.
What Amman and its partners should do together
Riyadh has a direct stake in Jordan’s regulatory reform, especially in the wake of the Iran war. The Saudi-Jordan bilateral agenda should pivot from project-by-project investment toward an explicit corridor investment strategy that will help build regional resilience against disruptions such as the one currently impacting the Strait of Hormuz. But with capital so constricted, Riyadh can no longer allow bureaucratic delays to trap Saudi money in limbo. The October memorandum of understanding with the Economic Cities and Special Zones Authority gives Riyadh a vehicle with which it can encourage Amman to modernize its regulations, as a condition for making the corridor work.
Additionally, Jordan can work together with its regional partners in four ways to improve connectivity along the corridor:
First, Jordan should push forward on proposed railway projects with the UAE, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. On the UAE project, Amman must set a clear construction timeline and break free from the feasibility-study loop. If Turkey brings the Hejaz Railway online this year, Jordan stands to gain economically through easier export transport. Riyadh could partner with Turkish firms to complete Jordan’s stretch of the Hejaz and begin connecting Saudi Arabia’s new freight line through Jordan to Syria.
Second, Riyadh and Amman should establish a joint corridor working group focused on Syria’s reconstruction and the supply chains needed for it, discussing logistics, customs, and the facilitation of trade at the Nasib-Jaber crossing. The September 2025 Jordanian-Saudi Business Forum placed Syrian reconstruction on the bilateral agenda, but that conversation needs institutional form. This working group should prioritize setting up critical infrastructure first, including a railway linking Saudi Arabia to Syria via Jordan.
Third, Saudi Arabia and Jordan can leverage plans for developing an inland port in the King Hussein Bin Talal Development Area in the Jordanian city of Mafraq as a logistics hub in a trade corridor. Plans for expanding the economic zone are moving forward, providing ample opportunity for Saudi investors to play a role in scaling it.
Fourth, Amman and Riyadh should formally align their long-term visions—for Jordan, the Economic Modernisation Vision, and for Saudi Arabia, its Vision 2030. In doing so, they should establish shared connectivity targets, including with digital infrastructure routing, energy interconnection, and the Hejaz Railway’s southern extension. They should build regulatory-reform benchmarks into the framework.
Jordan can eventually serve as a major transit hub connecting the Gulf to the Mediterranean. But that ambition starts with a narrower, more achievable objective of building out the economic and investment connectivity between Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria into a functioning corridor. Jordan is the country best positioned to anchor this corridor, if it moves with the urgency that the present moment demands.
Jesse Marks is the chief executive officer of Rihla Research & Advisory LLC and a former Fulbright scholar to Jordan.
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Image: A truck drives at Jaber border crossing with Syria, near Mafraq, Jordan, on September 29, 2021. Photo via REUTERS/Alaa Al Sukhni.