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.

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. 

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.

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. 

‘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. 

‘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.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly postponed a trip to the Middle East over heightened security concerns in the region and a possible retaliatory strike from Iran against Israel. 

Blinken’s trip, originally scheduled for Tuesday, was delayed over ‘uncertainty about the situation,’ Axios reported, citing two unnamed sources. 

The delayed trip comes ahead of planned cease-fire talks later this week after more than 10 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. 

Hamas fired two rockets aimed at Tel Aviv on Tuesday while Israel launched separate deadly airstrikes in Gaza. 

Despite the ongoing violence, U.S. officials said Monday they expected the talks to resume Thursday as planned. 

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany on Monday urged Iran and its allies to refrain from retaliatory attacks against Israel in response to the assassination of a top Hamas commander in Tehran last month. 

Israel was immediately blamed for the assassination after pledging to kill Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state, which killed 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken hostage. 

The Palestinian death toll is nearing 40,000 people, per figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. 

European leaders have also backed a push by mediators from the U.S., Qatar and Egypt to broker an agreement to end the Israel-Hamas war. 

Mediators have spent months trying to get both sides to agree to a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the remaining hostages captured in its Oct. 7 attack in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and Israel would withdraw from Gaza. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Critics have claimed President Biden’s seemingly light schedule and infrequent public appearances since dropping out of the presidential race will harm America’s image abroad, even as the White House stresses recent policy wins. 

‘Biden has disappeared from view, Harris is campaigning full-time, and won’t meet with the press,’ former national security adviser K.T. McFarland told Fox News Digital. 

‘This sends a signal to the world that there is no one in charge in the White House,’ McFarland explained. ‘Our allies wonder whether they can trust us.  Our adversaries see this as a wide open window of opportunity, when they can exploit us without risk of consequences.’

‘They know this window of opportunity will slam shut if Donald Trump is elected,’ McFarland argued. ‘We’re in a period of maximum vulnerability.’

Biden has made few public appearances and his schedule appears lighter than it had been prior to his decision not to seek a second term. 

When Fox News correspondent David Spunt last week asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre why the American people have not heard from the president, she replied that the White House had put out two readouts that day. 

Jean-Pierre also stressed that the administration is now in a ‘different time’ and that Americans would ‘get to see the president… it is certainly the president’s priority, to make sure that we do everything that we can, to protect our national security, right?’ 

The press secretary highlighted the push for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas as well as the administration’s response to Tropical Storm Debby as important issues that have taken Biden’s attention in recent weeks. 

But concerns about mounting tensions in the Middle East grew more severe this week as Israel revealed intelligence that indicated Iran would launch a significant attack, which would serve as retaliation for the death of Hamas commander Ismail Haniyeh. 

Top U.S. national security leaders said last week that they and allies are directly pressing Israel, Iran and others to avoid escalating the conflict, even as the U.S. moved more troops to the region and threatened retaliation if American forces are attacked.

The White House continued to stress Biden’s focus on a range of issues as proof that he’s not hiding from the public: Biden and the first lady will visit New Orleans this week to highlight the Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative to reduce the cancer death rate by at least half before 2047, NOLA reported. 

‘President Biden is working hard and building on the most successful record of any modern administration by delivering more results for the American people,’ White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital. 

Bates cited ‘an historic return of unjustly detained Americans from Russia, perpetuating the Biden-Harris manufacturing boom, lowering the costs of prescription drugs, and bringing unlawful border crossings to the lowest level in years’ as major recent wins for the administration. 

Bates also leveled criticism at the Republicans for ‘blocking tough, bipartisan border legislation on behalf of Donald Trump.’

Politico reported that Biden will use his final half-year in office to focus on ‘legacy items’ and give Vice President Kamala Harris the lion’s share of the limelight as she seeks to become the first female president of the United States: The White House, for example, will unveil Medicare price negotiation savings this week, which the Biden campaign – and now the Harris campaign – had aimed to focus on as part of the push for votes in November. 

But the White House is still in the early days of a tumultuous economic situation. The president claimed to have ‘cured the economy’ last week just before the stock market stumbled and raised concerns about the economic health of the country throughout the rest of the year. 

‘The July jobs report is being viewed as a recession warning, and the markets are responding accordingly,’ Bill Adams, chief economist at the Dallas-based Comerica Bank, said after the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 1,000 points, marking a 2.6% shift and the worst day since September 2022. 

Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace and Fox News Correspondent David Spunt contributed to this report.