The United Nations Security Council has voted in support of a resolution calling for autonomy in Western Sahara as the best solution possible to Rabat’s longstanding territorial dispute with the separatist Iranian and Algerian-backed Polisario Front.
In the early days of the Israel-Hamas war, Iran issued a baffling threat: if Israel did not relent in Gaza, Tehran would close the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow maritime passage separating Africa from...
Morocco’s King Muhammad VI invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 19 to visit him in Rabat. The invitation comes two days after Jerusalem announced that it recognized Morocco’s...
“We’re fighting the war out of our pickup trucks,” stated a Ukrainian soldier when reflecting on Ukraine’s slowing counteroffensive in Luhansk region. While Ukraine has a large inventory of tanks...
The recent Abbas-Haniyeh handshake signifies the desperate state of both Palestinian factions – as well as of their Algerian hosts
With the signing of the Abraham Accords last year, a rare sense of optimism washed over the Middle East. Many in Israel believed that these agreements signaled that the Arab world had given up on the Palestinian...
¿Por qué la soberanía del Sáhara Occidental continúa siendo una disputa abierta? El confl icto continúa embravecido porque Naciones Unidas y la mayor parte de la comunidad internacional occidental,...
Iran has historically supported any militancy against pro-Western regimes, regardless of their religious or political orientation.
Although Morocco seems to have escaped the worst of the pandemic with a relatively low number of confirmed cases and deaths, the COVID-19 crisis has devastated the country’s economy. Morocco, which has...
Selective Policies on Occupations, Protracted Conflicts, and Territorial Disputes
In a surprise move, Morocco announced this week it...
With the world’s attention focused on the question of Russian influence in the United States and the European Union, the Kremlin is quietly making inroads in anot...
Lebanese media reported Tuesday that the tycoon and terror financier Qassem Tajeddin has been apprehended in Morocco before boarding a flight to Beirut. The U.S. Treasury Department...
I recently spent nearly two weeks in North Africa, arriving just before popular demonstrations drove Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power and leaving just after the protesters occupi...
On Sunday, Southern Sudanese in their millions flocked to some three thousand polling stations set up not only in Sudan, but around the world to the accommodate the far-flung diaspora, to cast th...
The United States became painfully aware of the threat posed by global jihadism after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Until that day, Iranian-backed terrorist networks, such as Hezbolla...
After a nineteen year UN presence in the Western Sahara, the Security Council is about to follow Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's recommendation and vote to extend the mandate of the United N...
As the Iranian regime celebrated its 31st birthday last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first ordered and then boasted that the nuclear plant at Natanz had successfully enriched uranium to 19...
Guinea cannot seem to catch a break. In 1958, it was the only French colony to opt for an immediate break with France rather than continued association with Paris leading to gradual inde...
Morocco has long enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as an oasis of moderation and relative tranquility amid the whirl of religious extremism and violence that passes for politics in most of the Muslim world, especially its Arab lands. Moroccan leaders are wont to remind their American interlocutors that Morocco's Sultan Mohammed III was, in 1777, the first foreign sovereign to recognize the independence of the United States. Subsequently, a 1786 treaty established diplomatic relations between the two countries, the oldest such ties between America and any Middle Eastern country. Renegotiated in 1836, the accord is still in force, making it the United States' longest unbroken treaty relationship. In June 2004, after notifying Congress and in recognition of the country's strategic support for the war on terrorism, President George W. Bush formally designated Morocco a "Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States," making one of only fourteen states to be accorded that privileged status. And while it does not have full diplomatic relations with Israel, the Sharifian Kingdom has maintained high-level contacts with representatives of the Jewish state since 1986, when the late King Hassan II became only the second Arab ruler to openly host a senior Israeli leader, inviting then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to the royal palace at Ifran for formal talks. Just last week, on the ninth anniversary of his accession to the throne, King Mohammed VI conferred the Royal Order of Al-Alaoui on several prominent Jews of Moroccan origin, including Dr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund; Dr. Yehuda Lancry, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations; and Rabbi David Messas, chief rabbi of Paris. Thus it is more than disconcerting to note the rising tide of Islamist extremism and concomitant menace of terrorist violence in Morocco.