In this episode, Firas Maudad talks about the growing strategic partnership between Morocco and the United States in the Middle East and North Africa, and the reasons why this is a good thing for Israel and the US. He also talks about how the Arab world can join forces with Israel in order to counter Iranian influence in the region.
00:00:00.000Hello, welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Maudad, and today we're
00:00:08.620going to be talking about a bit of change that is happening in global logistics and
00:00:16.620in global trade and infrastructure, and what that means politically and how things are
00:00:22.500working out. And the starting point for this, I suppose, is what is happening in Morocco,
00:00:32.260which is a bit of an interesting detail that not enough people pay attention to.
00:00:37.900Now, Morocco has become a key partner for Israel and for the United States, and the reason for
00:00:46.400that is geography. If you just look at where Morocco sits, it is right there at the very edge
00:00:54.840of the Atlantic, stuck next to Algeria. On the other side, there's the water and then Spain.
00:01:02.160And it plays a pretty dominant role, actually, in African politics, and people tend to ignore that.
00:01:08.540Morocco's banks and telecoms companies especially are pretty widely spread out all over the Sahel region.
00:01:18.500Countries like Mauritania, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, etc.
00:01:22.340They all have Moroccan telecoms companies and or Moroccan banks.
00:01:29.080And if you are looking at the Middle East from an Israeli perspective, what it looks like is something like this.
00:01:37.540you've got iraq in the hands of iran you've got egypt which we will talk about uh in a second or
00:01:47.700near the end of this episode which is a borderline hostile state you've got saudi arabia which for
00:01:55.200religious reasons can't really normalize ties with israel fully and for the most part the rest of
00:02:03.600the countries are hostile. I mean, there's a peace treaty with Jordan, but actually Israel wants to
00:02:09.360expel the Palestinians of the West Bank into Jordan, and that will create a massive problem.
00:02:15.560There's Libya, a basket case. Algeria, an absolutely hostile state. Sudan, there was some0.97
00:02:22.600expectation of Sudan normalizing with Israel. That failed. And so the main partners for the
00:02:29.300Israelis are actually the UAE at the tip of the Gulf and close to the entrance of the Strait of
00:02:36.320Hormuz and Morocco. And the reasoning behind that is if you can get the countries that are far away0.89
00:02:44.980from you to side with you, you can cooperate with them against the countries that are in the middle0.71
00:02:52.600and slowly tame the Middle East to your will. And obviously this is in the context of a Greater0.86
00:02:58.380Israel project, and this is in the context of Israeli ambitions to force the Muslim world0.66
00:03:06.720to stop being hostile, because what's been happening for the Israelis is that every time0.59
00:03:12.500they reconcile with one of their neighbors, a new country shows up, like Iran, and starts0.57
00:03:19.400supporting the Palestinians and creating problems. Now Turkey is doing the same thing. So what they0.68
00:03:25.520want to do is really to try to transform the Middle East. And a key objective behind that0.99
00:03:31.300is to secure Israeli trade routes. The siege that the Houthi imposed on Israel was quite
00:03:37.560consequential, actually. The port city of Eilat here on the Red Sea, which is one of, you know,
00:03:45.000three major ports that the Israelis have, their port ended up going bankrupt because of...
00:03:51.520excuse me sorry about that uh the risks of going live uh their port ended up going bankrupt because
00:04:00.160of the uh houthi siege on uh on israeli shipping and so this has become a problem for israel
00:04:07.840and they're slowly figuring out ways to build new friendships in the region that would stop
00:04:16.160the endless hostility towards Israel from everybody in the Middle East.
00:04:21.120And then if you look at a marine map of the world that's another good starting point and you see
00:04:28.640instantly that there are a few lines of travel that everybody's stuck with and there are a few
00:04:35.600choke points that everybody's stuck with. Now one of these major shipping lines obviously goes
00:04:45.200through the Strait of Gibraltar, the entrance to the Mediterranean. And that is a critical one for
00:04:51.840Israel. Another one is the Suez and the Red Sea. That's a critical transportation network
00:05:00.720for the United States, for Israel, and pretty much for the whole world. Then there's Hormuz.
00:05:06.560That's a pretty big deal. We are seeing all of the disruption that is happening in the world
00:05:11.600because the Iranians and the Americans have shut down Hormuz.
00:05:16.480There is the strait next to Sri Lanka, which, again, pretty important.
00:05:24.660Everything that goes through the Red Sea travels on the way towards Sri Lanka,
00:05:30.700and then you get Indonesia, and you get the Malacast Strait there,
00:05:36.160and it is only through that that China or, you know, this is one of the few ways for China
00:05:43.160to get to Europe by ship. And so you see these shipping networks and you combine them with
00:05:53.540American needs and Israeli needs and then a bit of a strategy starts to emerge. I'm not going to
00:05:58.660talk about Panama and South Africa in this episode. That's a conversation for a different time.
00:06:03.920But I am going to talk about the policy for the wider Muslim world, in which what we're seeing is the beginning of an Indonesian-UAE-Moroccan partnership alongside Israel and the United States that is intended to secure this shipping line here.
00:06:25.620starting from Gibraltar, going through the Suez, and then the Red Sea, and the Bab el-Mandeb,
00:06:34.540and then going through the Strait of Malacca. So let's start with Morocco.
00:06:41.220In 2021, a year almost after the Moroccans entered the Abraham Accord and officially
00:06:48.980recognized Israel, the Israelis and the Moroccans signed a defense agreement,
00:06:54.240which is an incredibly unusual thing for an Arab country to do.
00:06:59.780Most of the time when Arab countries have some kind of relationship with Israel
00:07:04.820it is hostile at the popular level and this is true of Morocco
00:07:10.400and at the official level it's a bit of an arm's length relationship
00:07:15.100because of the unpopularity of any relationship with Israel
00:07:20.160as far as the peoples in the Muslim countries are involved.
00:07:26.180And so it was quite an escalation or an uptick, I don't know how to describe it,
00:07:34.300for the Israelis and the Moroccans to actually officially sign the defense agreement.
00:07:38.480And this didn't actually happen under Netanyahu.
00:07:42.000It happened under, I believe, Lapid, who was prime minister.
00:07:46.380And you saw the defense minister, at the time Benny Gantz, meeting with the Moroccan chief of staff.
00:07:59.440And, you know, this was something that would upset the Moroccan public.
00:08:05.100Because even though the Israelis and the Moroccans have a pretty long-standing relationship with Morocco,
00:08:10.980and I would argue Tunisia, over the course of history, having some of the closer relationships
00:08:18.700with the Israelis, elevating it to this level was quite unusual. Elevating their relations to the
00:08:26.860level of a defense agreement was very unusual. And then this year, we saw even deeper cooperation
00:08:34.820with Israel and Morocco signing a framework to exchange technology and to build industry
00:08:42.440jointly, and with plans for Morocco to start building drones using Israeli technologies,
00:08:52.280buying a big amount of military equipment from Israel, and things like that. And from the
00:08:58.200Moroccan perspective, what this does is that this brings them closer to the United States,0.50
00:09:02.340which is a kind of theme that we saw in the Epstein files. If you want to be in the good
00:09:08.980books of the Donald Trump administration, one of the things that you should do is to try to get in
00:09:14.760Israel's good books, and that wins you success. And that's why, if you remember, we saw Indian0.99
00:09:21.240Prime Minister Narendra Modi going to Israel and dancing with Benjamin Netanyahu as a way of
00:09:27.820showing the Americans that actually he is on their side.
00:09:31.740So the deepening of this military cooperation is important.
00:09:37.140And what it provides Israel is a state that is close to Algeria, which is now the largest,
00:09:46.260very hostile to Israel, Middle Eastern country operating right now.0.68
00:09:54.540It's a huge country with an enormous amount of resources.0.61
00:09:58.920The Spanish and the French and the Italians do depend on Algerian gas and on Algerian
00:10:13.940It is a socialist dictatorship where the military chooses a president and then when they've
00:10:20.320chosen one, they try to keep him there for life.
00:10:23.880And it's a weird combination between the worst of Stalinist and French bureaucracies combined
00:10:32.440with one another, running a country of 40 million people, which makes Algeria potentially0.98
00:10:39.440a significant player if it only wasn't governed by Algerians, really, because the quality0.98
00:10:46.880of the government there is absolutely atrocious.0.99
00:10:50.800The Algerians themselves describe a phenomenon called the haitists, hait means wall and haitist
00:10:57.360means somebody who's constantly leaning against the wall because that is largely what Algerian
00:11:02.880youth do to the extent that they have things like pre-employment contracts where people0.99
00:11:08.220are promised government jobs but there aren't any government jobs available so they just
00:11:12.820get paid in exchange for standing by a wall and leaning on it.
00:11:17.680Well, Algeria, because it gets so much Russian weaponry and is the third biggest buyer of Russian military equipment, is a militarily important state.
00:11:33.080And so what the Israelis and the Americans are doing is that they're trying to make sure
00:11:37.840that there isn't a very hostile Algeria that is able to restrict navigation through Gibraltar.0.64
00:11:48.060And what they're doing is that they're strengthening Morocco.
00:11:51.040And Morocco has become a pretty important player in things like manufacturing parts for French cars
00:11:58.940and in providing some basic electronic equipment for Europe.
00:12:06.260And it's developing its industries quite rapidly with a view towards becoming an offshoring destination for European countries
00:12:15.780that doesn't have the same risk as China, commercially speaking.
00:12:21.660politically and militarily. It's a much bigger risk given the number of Moroccan migrants and0.99
00:12:27.680North African migrants in Europe. But it is trying to become a bulwark acting against Algeria0.98
00:12:35.600and therefore Russia behind it in partnership with Israel and the United States.
00:12:42.000And from the American perspective, having a strong presence on the other side of the Atlantic is
00:12:47.240important. And so to get the Moroccans to make their relationship with Israel more official,
00:12:55.140what the Americans did was that they said that this piece of territory here,
00:12:58.900the Western Sahara, is officially part of Morocco, which is something that the Algerians reject.
00:13:06.840And so there are gains in this from both an American perspective and an Israeli perspective.
00:13:13.140You get an ally sitting on the eastern coast of the Atlantic, policing the Strait of Gibraltar, able to check a Russian client state in Algeria and build friendly relations with Israel.
00:13:30.620And because of the long or the large presence of Moroccan banking and communications in Africa, you get oversight over financial transactions and communications via Morocco.0.78
00:13:47.540So that's one step in this project to secure these trade routes and to secure the support or acquiescence of the Muslim world for the presence of the State of Israel.0.70
00:14:11.820Now, the implication of this is really fascinating because now you're seeing Israel openly saying that it is going to work to support Morocco against Spain to reward Morocco for its backing for Israel and to punish Spain for its refusal to back Israel.
00:14:39.300And this is a very unusual piece that was published in Ynet, which is the English-language version of one of Israel's biggest newspapers, Yadiot Ahranot.
00:14:52.920And here, this gentleman, I think Moroccan, is openly saying that what Israel is going to be doing now is working with American think tanks in order to push the Trump administration into recognizing two exclaves that the Spanish have on the coast of Morocco.
00:15:21.780and transfer their sovereignty to the Moroccans.
00:15:25.840So essentially a reverse of the Reconquista
00:15:28.220because these were territories that were taken by Spain
00:15:31.780in the long and brutal wars it has had to fight against Muslims
00:15:39.440And now the Israelis are saying that they want to back the Moroccans
00:15:46.020to help them recapture this territory.0.91
00:15:48.940Now there's a silver lining here which is that
00:15:51.420these two exclaves are territories from which a lot of illegal migrants break
00:15:57.360in and then get transferred into Spain. But the logic here is fascinating.
00:16:04.240And here you see this guy saying that they've been assembling pieces to get
00:16:08.520this kind of support to transfer American support against Spain for
00:16:16.080months. And in March, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute wrote for the
00:16:22.940Middle East Forum, both of these organizations are extremely pro-Israel, called on the Trump
00:16:30.080administration to formally recognize Quetta and Melilla as occupied Moroccan territory,
00:16:36.320branding Spain a colonial power running colonies across the Strait of Gibraltar.
00:16:41.760And then an ally of Marco Rubio comes in and says that these territories are not in the
00:16:54.840geographic territory of Spain, but rather in Moroccan territory. So they're pressuring Marco
00:17:01.000Rubio to change policy in order to back the Moroccans further, in order to solidify the
00:17:10.100Israeli-Moroccan-American alliance and to punish Spain because Spain stood against the United
00:17:17.600States in the war against Iran. And generally, it has to be said, Spain has a very extreme0.53
00:17:26.640left-wing government that went as far as to legalize, you know, maybe up to a million
00:17:32.920illegal migrants and essentially grant them the permanent right to remain to Spain.
00:17:37.880So they're trying to exploit this now, and they are saying that this is a coordinated0.98
00:17:46.320campaign to punish the Spaniards, which I really find to be incredible.0.82
00:17:54.860And they're saying that this is essentially a reward because Israel and Morocco have signed0.83
00:18:01.200a joint military agreement and are planning on deepening their defense cooperation.
00:18:07.880The logic here is stunningly cynical. And that is what they're working on. And you see the Americans actually taking this to heart to a certain extent and saying that because Spain refused to back the United States and allow the United States to use its bases against Iran, what should be done is that Spain should be suspended from NATO,
00:18:35.000although there is no such mechanism for that and maybe also recognize the falklands
00:18:41.720in the southern atlantic as part of argentina and you sort of see how this is a sort of
00:18:50.680coordinated move to reward israel's friends and punish its enemies and you see that carrying
00:18:59.320over into trade policy because the bigger that morocco becomes in european supply chains
00:19:06.120the bigger israeli influence over western companies that rely on these supply chains
00:19:14.860and therefore the bigger israeli influence over european policy making and it's just genuinely
00:19:22.000brilliant it's genuinely brilliant but it is connected to a strategy that does benefit the
00:19:28.060United States and that has to be said so it's not clearly it's not just a case
00:19:32.500of the United States serving Israel it is also serving the American objective
00:19:37.240in strengthening control over key waterways it's just that the Americans
00:19:42.220no longer regard the Europeans as reliable allies and are looking for
00:19:46.600allies in the Muslim world and the litmus test to see that they are reliable
00:19:51.280allies is whether or not they align with Israel so that's one part of the equation
00:19:58.060The other part of the equation is obviously the United Arab Emirates, and Barak Ravid of Axios, who is very close to Israeli intelligence circles, who sort of showed up out of the blue with incredible sources in the Trump administration as well.
00:20:13.740So, he's reporting that the UAE received the Iron Dome missile defense system from Israel in order to help it against Iran, and that this was the result of an agreement between the UAE's prime minister, or the UAE's ruler, and the Israeli prime minister.
00:20:37.760and this is exceptional because the israelis haven't given the iron dome to anyone
00:20:44.640they ended up transferring a unit to the united to the uae and it seems that this unit played a
00:20:52.400big role especially in shooting down uh iranian drones now as a reminder um the
00:21:01.260The Iron Dome system is mainly designed to deal with smaller and low-flying targets,
00:21:09.300so it doesn't really work against ballistic missiles.
00:21:11.800It really works quite well against drones.
00:21:15.540And rather than spending extremely expensive Patriot and FAD systems