Jordan last night emerged as an unlikely defender of Israel despite its scathing criticism of the Gaza war and recent anti-Israeli protests.

After Iran launched almost 200 drones and dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles, Jordan –  which shares a lengthy border with Israel – scrambled its fighter jets overnight to shoot down many of the drones.

Neither the IDF nor the United States or Jordan on Sunday offered exact figures on their involvement in the taking out of 99 per cent of Iran’s missiles and drones but reports suggest that most – if not all – drones were shot down outside Israeli borders, most likely in Jordan.

Jordan’s government said on Sunday it intercepted “flying objects” that breached its airspace after it was closed shortly before midnight on Saturday.

“Some flying objects that entered our airspace last night were dealt with and confronted,” the government said in a statement, stressing that the military “will confront anything that would expose the security and safety of the nation ... to any danger or transgression by any party”.

Drones were brought down in the air on the Jordanian side of the Jordan Valley that it shares with Israel and the occupied West Bank as they were heading towards Jerusalem, which triggered rare air raid sirens in the city, unnamed security officials in Jordan told Reuters. Others were reportedly intercepted closer to the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Swarms of Iranian drones were sighted in the skies over the northern, central and southern parts of Jordan as well as the capital of Amman, which is a one-hour drive away from the Israeli border.

Jordan has been critical of Israel’s war with Gaza, with its foreign minister accusing Israel of aiming to “empty out Gaza”, which he said meets the legal definition of genocide.

The king of Jordan last week teamed up with the presidents of France and Egypt, urging Israel for a ceasefire.

Israelis expressed surprise mixed with admiration for its eastern neighbour and former adversary that managed to shoot down many of the drones over its territory.

“Forgive me for getting personal, but the fact that my parents sat in shelters during the War of Attrition following rockets from Jordan – and tonight there was the same air raid alert in the kibbutz but Jordan helped intercept them from Iran is like a hallucination,” Nurit Yohanan, a reporter with the public broadcaster Kan, tweeted on Sunday.

“Israel has cashed the check for many smart decisions from decades ago.”

Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst at the Crisis Group, described the Jordanian involvement “especially remarkable for a generation of Israelis that remembers sheltering from attacks from Jordan”.

Jordan together with Egypt and the Palestine Liberation Organisation fought Israel in the War of Attrition from 1967 to 1970. It has since grown closer to Israel, along with Arab and Gulf partners like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Jordan is a crucial link to Israel as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank have to cross the land border into Jordan to travel abroad as they are not allowed to fly out of the Ben Gurion airport.

The extraordinary act of solidarity, mostly likely done at Washington’s request, is likely to anger many Jordanians who have been protesting for months, demanding severing diplomatic ties with Israel.

Just two weeks earlier, Jordan’s riot police violently suppressed a major rally and arrested dozens after the crowd tried to march towards the heavily guarded Israeli embassy in the capital Amman.

Many in Jordan have Palestinian roots and feel a deep affinity with Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza and have seen the 1994 peace treaty with Israel as a betrayal of their Palestinian brothers.

Jordan has had a persistent wave of angry anti-Israel rallies, which led to a government response so harsh that Amnesty International in February called on the Jordanian government to end what it called a “sweeping crackdown that has seen hundreds of people arrested” for expressing their support for Palestinians or criticising the Jordanian government’s Israeli policy.

Whereas Jordan appears to be the only Arab nation to have taken a direct role in responding to the attack, Iran on Sunday issued a stern warning against any nations alighting with Israel.

“Whichever country opens its soil and airspace to Israel for a potential attack on Iran, it will receive our decisive response,” Brig Gen Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, Iran’s defence minister, said in a statement on Twitter on Sunday.