precariously positioned with some challenging neighbors. syria to the north and iraq to the northeast, saudi arabia to the east and egypt and the sinai across the gulf of acaba. despite the external turmoil, jordan has not had its own arab spring. listen to my conversation with king abdullah ii. >> when you look at the arab spring, is it fair to draw the inference that repression has not worked, but bribery has? but those that have large oil wealth were able to provide patronage of various kinds, particularly in the gulf have all survived. >> well, i think you have to take a step back and look at history how the middle east was divided up. this is one of the problems we