Israel, Henry Budkin, in which he said that Israeli gangs are flooding Jordan with illegal drugs that are smuggled across the border by balloons.
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Officials say criminals are also smuggling methamphetamine, amphetamines, and hashish into Jordan using quadcopter drones. These gangs are believed to be exploiting the high price of drugs in Saudi Arabia. One Israeli estimate puts the price of a kilogram of hashish in Jordan at £7,500, following a sharp increase in prices over the past two years.
Jordanian security forces have been forced to intensify patrols and upgrade border watchtowers and drones due to the smuggling of tens of thousands of kilograms of drugs. The Israeli army and security forces regularly announce the seizure of weapons being smuggled into Israel from Jordan. Last month, they announced the confiscation of a drone carrying nine Kalashnikov rifles. Some on the Israeli right use arms imports as a pretext to bolster the military presence in the West Bank and justify the existence of Israeli settlements as a security buffer between what they describe as a hostile Arab state and Israel. However, The Telegraph has learned that Jordanian military leaders believe these selective statements portray the kingdom as a rogue neighbor, ignoring crimes committed on the Israeli side.
A military source said: “These statements issued by the Israeli side are exaggerated and inaccurate, and only cover half the truth.” “There are mutual drug smuggling operations into Jordan, and the Jordanian border guards have actively thwarted several attempts to smuggle drugs from Israel in recent months.”
The Israeli military rejected any suggestion that it was not taking drug smuggling seriously, stressing that it had recently established a new military division to reinforce the border and had begun work on building a new security barrier.
Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2014, Jordan has intensified its efforts to dismantle the remnants of the drug empire run by the former Syrian dictator, which generated substantial revenue for him. This has included operations to prevent the entry of drugs, such as Captagon, a type of amphetamine pill produced in large quantities in southern Syria, into Jordan.
The Jordanian Air Force bombed sites in Syria’s Sweida province this summer with the aim of disrupting drug smuggling operations.
This campaign has led to a rise in drug prices in Jordan, a close ally of the United States and Britain.
Israeli security forces believe that the price of hashish on the black market in Jordan is fifteen times higher than in Israel. The Telegraph obtained official figures illustrating the scale of the problem: since the beginning of 2026, Jordanian security forces have seized more than 15,000 Captagon pills, nearly 20,000 kilograms of methamphetamine, and 6,000 blocks of hashish, in addition to large quantities of other drugs. Leaked military photos show the use of quadcopter drones and small balloons.
The smuggling of weapons into Israel from neighboring countries such as Egypt and Jordan is a well-documented phenomenon. Transnational gangs supply these weapons to organized criminal groups, and Israeli officials warn that they could easily fall into the hands of terrorist organizations. Often, the same gangs that smuggle drugs out of Israel are the ones that smuggle weapons into the Jewish state, and they use the same methods. Jordan and Israel have been bound by a peace treaty since 1994, and the two countries quietly cooperate on security matters.
However, Jordan has become more vocal in its criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since the Gaza war. At the UN General Assembly last month, King Abdullah II of Jordan said, “This [Israeli] government’s sense of impunity has reached alarming levels,” criticizing what he called Israel’s “expansionist appetite” as a “regional threat.”
A military source said: “Jordan issues regular and transparent official statements regarding all smuggling attempts threatened by the border guards, while Israel selects its reports on specific incidents and exaggerates them in an attempt to suggest that there are security problems on the border.” “It seems that these repeated statements aim to create the illusion of a constant threat on the border to justify tightening security and military measures in the West Bank and border areas.”
Israeli intervention in southern Syria has, according to some analysts, impacted the illicit drug trade in the Levant. Following the rise to power of forces loyal to Ahmed al-Sharaa in 2014, Israeli forces occupied a portion of southern Syrian territory. Israel also expanded its financial, political, and military support for the Druze faction in the Suwaida province as part of a strategy to limit the influence of the new Syrian regime.
Since then, Suwaida has emerged as a major center for drug production in Syria, given the limited ability of the Shara government to intervene and crush this trade due to the Israeli presence.
An Israeli military spokesman said: “The claim that the army is not taking the issue of smuggling along the eastern border seriously does not reflect the scale of the efforts and measures being taken to confront it.”
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