TEL AVIV – Vice President Mike Pence was “tricking” the Arabs by trying to smooth over “[President]Trump’s despicable declaration” regarding Jerusalem, claimed a former high-ranking minister in Jordan said following the vice president’s recent visit to Amman.

The former Jordanian minister went on to claim that “Israel will soon disappear” and the U.S. will lose global hegemony as long as “the stupid idiot” Trump is in power.

Former Jordanian information minister Saleh Al-Qallab added that Pence “is more Zionist than Netanyahu and Trump.”

Al-Qallab’s comments come amid a climate of hostility towards the Trump administration in the Jordanian kingdom. Pence’s visit, which was part of his tour to the region that included stops in Israel and Egypt, was treated with disdain. A low level delegation greeted the vice president at the airport with only the mayor of Amman present and no government ministers.

Jordanian King Abdullah II slammed Pence over the the U.S.’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying that the city was the “key to peace in the region.” Pence responded saying that the declaration had no bearing on Jerusalem’s final status and its boundaries, “which are subject to negotiations.”

In a column for the government’s newspaper Al-Rai, Al-Qallab wrote, “Mike Pence tricked us by saying that ‘the borders of Jerusalem will be determined in future negotiations’ – while he prepared the despicable and unacceptable statement of his master, Donald Trump.”

He added that Trump gave away Jerusalem, “something that does not belong to him to someone who is unentitled,” referring to Israel.

However, he said, it hardly matters because Israel, whose “existence is opposed by the Arab conscience” will “certainly disappear one of these days,” he wrote in the column translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Al-Qallab stated that it was the right thing to allow Pence to visit Amman, since refusing him entry would only provide Israel with more fuel.

“But if Mike Pence came only to cheat us and say that the borders of Jerusalem, which was given by the president to Israel as a gift for its eternal united capital, will be determined through future negotiations, we oppose this and will not be able to accept this.

“This is because death with honor and pride, no matter what, is preferable to a life of humiliation and wretchedness,” he added.

He concluded that the U.S. would suffer the same fate as Great Britain, which saw itself shrink from an empire that “ruled the world” into a single island that is wrought with “division and disintegration.”

“This most certainly will be the fate of the U.S., as long as its president is this stupid idiot, and now that it has begun to lose [its status] as the one and only leader” in the world, he wrote.