This paper offers an assessment of the political challenges, and opportunities, that climate change and increasing water scarcity pose for Arab states, particularly those that do not have large reserves of oil and natural gas. Most of the existing academic literature on “water politics” in the Middle East focuses on the international dimensions of growing water scarcity and has neglected the impact that this phenomenon can have on politics within Arab countries. This paper seeks to help fill this gap in the literature through a case study of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. While Jordan is not representative of all Arab countries, its status as one of the most “water poor” countries in the region makes it a critical case for understanding the various challenges that Arab countries in general will face as population growth, rising regional temperatures, and increasingly volatile meteorological events lead to lower levels of freshwater per capita. Moreover, Jordan is currently experiencing developments similar to those of many other Arab countries (e.g., extreme social frustration with economic and political inequality, poor government management of water resources, and growing tensions between social groups). The paper will illustrate that Jordanian and other Arab governments’ nearly exclusive focus on increasing the supply of available freshwater is short sighted, ecologically destructive, and creates the potential for serious political challenges to political elites in the region who are already weak and vulnerable. The paper will also analyze several examples of current conflicts between the Jordanian government on the one hand, and groups such as farmers and municipal water consumers on the other. This analysis will demonstrate the areas where the Jordanian government is failing to responsibly manage freshwater resources and suggest solutions which are sensitive to the politically volatile task of imposing water conservation practices on social groups already frustrated with the government’s poor management of the economy and haphazard political reform efforts. The paper’s conclusions are based primarily on information acquired from personal interviews with Jordanian water experts and political analysts during January 2012. In addition, the paper relies heavily on recent publications by the Agence Française de Développement (AFP), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and the Jordanian government in order to empirically demonstrate the dire state of freshwater resources in the kingdom.