The Arab Legion (al-Jaysh al-Arabī) was the regular army of Transjordan and then Jordan in the early part of the 20th century.

In October 1920, after taking over the Transjordan region, the United Kingdom formed a unit of 150 men called the "Mobile Force" under the command of Captain Frederick Gerard Peake to defend the territory against both internal and external threats. The Legion was based in Zarqa and 80% of its men were the local Chechens.

It was quickly expanded to 1,000 men recruiting Arabs who had served in the military of the Ottoman Empire. On 22 October 1923, the police were merged with the Reserve Mobile Force, still under Peake, who was now an employee of the Emirate of Transjordan. The new force was named Al Jeish al Arabi (the Arab Army) but was always known officially in English as the Arab Legion. The Arab Legion was financed by Britain and commanded by British officers. The force was formed as a police force to keep order among the tribes of Transjordan and to guard the important Jerusalem–Amman road.

Hussein bin Talal (Arabic: حسين بن طلال‎, Ḥusayn bin Ṭalāl; 14 November 1935 – 7 February 1999) was King of Jordan from the abdication of his father, King Talal, in 1952, until his death. Hussein's rule extended through the Cold War and four decades of Arab-Israeli conflict. He recognized Israel in 1994, becoming the second Arab head of state to do so.

Hussein claimed to be a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his relations with the ancient Hashemite family.

Hussein was born in Amman on 14 November 1935 to Talal bin Abdullah and Princess Zein al-Sharaf bint Jamil. After completing his elementary education in Amman, he was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria. He proceeded to Harrow School in England, where he befriended his cousin Faisal II of Iraq. He pursued further study at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

On 20 July 1951, Prince Hussein traveled to Jerusalem to perform Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque with his grandfather, King Abdullah I, where an assassin opened fire on Abdullah and his grandson. Abdullah was killed, but the 15-year-old Hussein survived the assassination attempt, and according to the Jordanian government, pursued the gunman. The Jordanian government claims that the gunman turned his weapon on the young prince, who was saved when the bullet was deflected by a medal on his uniform which had been given to him by his grandfather.

Webster Griffin Tarpley (born 1946) is an American historian, author, journalist, lecturer, and critic of US foreign and domestic policy. Tarpley maintains that the September 11 attacks were engineered by a rogue network of the military-industrial complex and intelligence agencies as a false flag operation. His writings and speeches describe a model of terror operations by a rogue network in the military/intelligence sector working with moles in the private sector and in corporate media, and locates such contemporary false flag operations in a historical context stretching back in the English speaking world to at least the Gunpowder Plot in England in 1605.

Tarpley was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1946. He received a BA degree summa cum laude in English and Italian from Princeton University in 1966. While a student at Princeton he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and was a Fulbright Scholar at University of Turin in Italy. Tarpley also obtained a MA degree in humanities from Skidmore College. As well as a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America in History.