Why Iran is not serious about normalizing ties with Morocco

Few days after Iran said it looks forward to normalizing ties with Morocco and Egypt, the regime of the Moullah has once again shown its hostility to Morocco by supporting the thesis of the Polisario and its Algerian mentors at the UN’s fourth committee.

Foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told Iranian ambassadors to Muslim countries on the day of Eid that Tehran welcomes normal ties with Morocco and Egypt.

The statement was met with little enthusiasm in Morocco which broke ties with Tehran in 2018 due to the military support by Iran and its Hezbollah proxy for the Algeria-backed Polisario separatists.

Morocco has also in the past severed ties with Iran on the back of its destabilizing acts through promoting the Shia rite in the Sunni country.

Iran has now doubled down with its vocal support for the Polisario separatist militias at the UN showing once more its double speak.

Morocco has also spearheaded Arab voices warning of Iran’s destabilizing acts in North Africa, including its drone supplies to militias that threaten regional peace.

Morocco, which has been warning of Iranian incursions in the Sahel via Algeria, rang the alarm bell that the Polisario are seeking Iranian drones after they failed in their Algeria-sponsored guerilla warfare. In October, senior Polisario official Omar Mansour promised supporters of a forthcoming offensive drone delivery from Iran. Few days later, Iranian Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said 22 countries, including Algeria, ordered Iranian drones.

The acquisition by the Polisario of Iranian drones via Algeria “will vindicate what we have been saying for three years that Iran and Hezbollah are infiltrating Tindouf and North Africa and have moved from training to equipping the Polisario with drones and this is a serious development,” Morocco’s representative to the UN Omar Hilale had said in response.

“Morocco is right to be worried, but so is the world. Drones are a lethal infection, spreading fast,” wrote Llewellyn King executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. In an op-ed in the Boston Herald and the New England Diary, he warns of the lethality of drones as a tactical tool that can inflict serious damage on critical infrastructure.

Citing, Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, he said Iran is now relying on drones to back its proxies on multiple asymmetric conflicts. Israel’s Iron Dome could help Morocco thwart Iranian drone attacks but “that would take years of negotiation and sales are subject to a U.S. veto,” he said.

If the news about Polisario acquiring Iranian drones is true ”…this will vindicate what we have been saying for three years that Iran and Hezbollah are infiltrating Tindouf and North Africa and have moved from training to equipping the Polisario with drones and this is a serious development,” Hilale said last year.

If Iran is really serious about resuming ties with Morocco it should halt its support for the Polisario and break away with its quest to export what it calls the Islamic revolution while respecting the sovereignty and tenets of the Kingdom.