Jordan has thwarted a suspected Iranian-led plot to smuggle weapons into the US-allied kingdom.
The plot, orchestrated by Iranian-backed militias in Syria, intended to supply opponents of the ruling monarchy with arms for potential acts of sabotage.
According to sources cited by Reuters, the weapons were destined for a cell of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan with purported ties to the military wing of Hamas, a Palestinian group.
The weapon cache was seized following the arrest of members of the cell, who are Jordanians of Palestinian descent, in late March.
"They hide these weapons in pits called dead spots, they take their location via GPS and photograph their location and then instruct men to retrieve them from there," said one of the Reuters sources.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Islamist movement, of which Hamas is an offshoot founded in the 1980s.
The movement says it does not advocate violence, and Jordan's Brotherhood has operated legally in the kingdom for decades.
Jordanian authorities believe Iran and its allied groups like Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah are trying to recruit young, radical members of the kingdom's Brotherhood to their anti-Israel, anti-US cause in a bid to expand Tehran's regional network of aligned forces, according to the two sources who spoke to Reuters.
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