AT THE outbreak of the Arab spring few thrones looked as precarious as that of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Squeezed between bigger, beefier and more turbulent neighbours, his resource-poor kingdom faced mounting friction at home. Trouble brewed between the numerical minority of native “East Bankers” and the relatively disenfranchised majority of Jordanians who are of Palestinian descent. Government critics, both Islamist and secular, jockeyed to exploit street-level discontent. The king’s traditional immunity from criticism had worn dangerously thin, his talk of reform belied by such enduring woes as a yawning wealth gap, corruption, an intrusive security apparatus and heavily stage-managed politics.

“No one would have bet on Jordan back then,” admits a former minister. But now, three years later, he reckons that King Abdullah is at the zenith of his power. Other observers agree. A mix of serendipity and political skill have not just helped the 51-year-old Jordanian monarch avoid the fate of other Arab autocrats. They have steered his 6.5m subjects through a period of unusual stress, worsened by such factors as a growing energy import bill and the influx of some 700,000 Syrian refugees.

Despite that extra burden, the ironic truth is that Syria’s misfortune has, so far at least, worked to King Abdullah’s benefit. Worried allies such as America and Saudi Arabia have poured in aid to bolster what they see as a vital buffer state. At the same time the devastation of Syria’s civil war, along with unrelenting violence in Iraq and enduring political divisions among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, have combined to cool Jordanian tempers. “The appetite for the kind of mobilisation that could generate real change has very much diminished,” says Mouin Rabbani, an analyst in Amman, Jordan’s capital.

Whereas ordinary Jordanians seem simply relieved that their king has kept them out of neighbouring conflicts, those troubles have driven a wedge into Jordan’s political opposition. Secular groups are fiercely divided between friends and foes of Syria’s embattled regime. The Muslim Brotherhood, long the most powerful opposition force in Jordan in its guise as the Islamic Action Front, has also split into warring camps, with the recent overthrow of Egypt’s Brotherhood president prompting some of its Jordanian adherents to argue for a less combative approach.

In a sign of declining opposition clout, street protests against cuts in food and fuel subsidies have drawn diminishing crowds. Policy changes as well as luck have helped to blunt criticism of the king. Queen Rania, whose glamorous profile riled conservatives, has largely withdrawn from the public eye. Constitutional reforms have gone part of the way to meet reformers’ demands, and high-profile anti-corruption cases have partly appeased critics of the government.

Yet the mood in the kingdom remains anxious, not merely because neighbouring troubles could still prove contagious. Further cuts in subsidies are needed to trim a perilously chronic budget deficit and some fear that, with the organised opposition in disarray, any renewed eruption of street protests would be leaderless and hard to control.

Others fear that King Abdullah, rather than taking advantage of his stronger position to enact deeper reforms, such as reining in the overweening power of his security agencies, will instead revert to his old ways. That could mean that the kingdom’s comparative stability is not a turning point but merely a reprieve.