Mr Blair must beware of dismissing Arab concerns over an Iraqi invasion

From the discreet group of army officers, protocol officials and crew-cut American secret servicemen outside the VIP suite at Amman's Arka airport on Tuesday afternoon, it was obvious that the incoming USAF Boeing 707 was carrying a passenger as heavy duty as he was unannounced. But the Jordanian Army colonel organising the welcoming party did not hesitate when he was asked who it was. "General Tommy Franks," he said. "The next President of Iraq."

The Colonel's face creased into laughter as he said it. But the joke was not only an ironic reference to last weekend's disclosures that Washington is considering a medium-term US military administration in Baghdad – with General Franks in the role played by General MacArthur in post-Second World War Japan. It also graphically expressed fears – not least in the Colonel's own country – over just what will happen after any war to oust Saddam Hussein. And of all the fears prevalent among Arab governments about the US's threatened invasion of Iraq, this is the one that remains the most potent.

Jack Straw has a stock response to questions about Arab alarm over the prospects of war in Iraq. Which is that, while even the more "moderate" regimes find it necessary to oppose US plans for an invasion, in private they make no secret of their keenness to see Saddam toppled. No doubt that is "literally" true. But it's clear from a two-day visit to Egypt and Jordan with Chris Patten, the EU's External Affairs Commissioner, that this is very far from the uncomplicated acquiescence in US-British plans that it is sometimes taken to be.

Instead, the mood among the governing élites in both Cairo and Amman appears rather to be one of resignation coupled with some bafflement and deep apprehension about the consequences of the actions of what some leading politicians are prepared to admit in private is one of the most difficult US administrations they have had to deal with.

Take Jordan, wedged uncomfortably between Iraq on one side and Israel and the occupied territories on the other. It's clear that King Adbullah will not replicate the stance of his father, King Hussein, at the time of the last Gulf War over a decade ago and come out against a war to oust Saddam. He wants to be on the winning side, and no one here imagines that the world's only superpower will, in the end, be defeated by a weakened Iraqi regime.

Though no member of the government in Amman would ever admit it, it's even conceivable that he could eventually be persuaded by General Franks to allow very limited help, such as allowing bases to be used for search-and-rescue missions. But the idea that his ministers await a US invasion of Iraq with anything other than real anxiety is wishful thinking.

Some reasons for this anxiety are only too obvious. Security could be threatened not only by an Iraqi military response to Jordan's support for the US – even if tacit – but by large-scale street demonstrations and perhaps terrorist attacks. There could be acute pressure to open Jordan's border to up to 1 million refugees from Iraq, who UN agencies estimate could seek shelter in or seek passage through Jordan. And the economic consequences, according to Dr Michael Marto, Jordan's experienced finance minister – like many of his colleagues a Palestinian – would be "very drastic". Jordan depends on Iraqi oil, subsidised by grants and discounts and paid for by barter. She has only 22 days of crude oil reserves. And so on.

But there is, in Amman as in Cairo, a longer view than this. "Changing the regime is going to be much easier than finding a new one," Marwan Muasher, the Jordanian Foreign Minister, said this week, adding that it was not always a given that "anything is better than the status quo". This is much more than some stock line for public consumption. The Jordanians know better than most that a strong transitional leadership is needed to prevent a descent into a bloody post-Saddam civil war, disintegration of the country and uncontainable regional instability.

Since they see, and are optimistic that the US also sees, the dissident Iraqi National Congress as improbable candidates for the task, to put it mildly, they can even see the theoretical case for a strong US transitional military command. Particularly if their tentative hopes of some strong but more benevolent figure, perhaps from the Army, emerging from inside the country are not fulfilled.

But in practice they are painfully aware of the potentially devastating effect on Muslim public opinion, and the nourishment it will provide to extremism, of a protracted occupation by the US that would underline the status of Arabs as third-class citizens. The point made at a senior level in Amman is that, yes, Germany and Japan were occupied and reconstructed by the allies after the Second World War. But they started those wars, which the Iraqi regime, for all its deeply evil character, won't have done. Beyond that there are acute worries about the wilder plans – "naive and ideological" in the words of one high official – on the right-wing tip of the US administration for "redrawing" the post-war map of the Middle East, most fancifully with some imposed but supposedly Western-friendly Hashemite empire extending from Jordan to include Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

The worst-case scenario, however, as seen in Jordan and Egypt, is for the dangerously uncertain consequences of a US victory in Iraq, quite possibly won at a heavy cost in civilian casualties, to take place without tangible progress in the Middle East peace process. There have been sharp differences between the EU and the US over the "road map" towards Palestinian statehood by 2005, with the US seeking to make the steps conditional on a cessation of violence in ways the Europeans regard as giving Ariel Sharon's government a veto on progress.

But even supposing that these can be bridged at a meeting today of the "Quartet", which also includes Russia and the UN, there is little evidence that the agreed words will be turned into action. And action would mean the application of pressure on Israel to begin the process of ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories and entering serious negotiations on a final settlement. The unanswered question is whether Bush can yet be prevailed upon by the State Department to see, as the British appear to, the need for such a link that goes beyond mere words.

Jordan and Egypt are hardly unblemished monopolists of wisdom on the Middle East. Egypt, in particular, faces strong criticism on its human rights record and the painfully slow pace of progress towards real democracy – a point made by Mr Patten during his energetic pursuit of improved economic and political relations between the EU and the region this week. But that doesn't mean they have nothing worth listening to. Resigned they may be. But whatever Mr Straw and others say, their worries about the impending conflagration are real.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk