Israel-Morocco Military Ties Raise Concerns in Spain’s Defense Circles

"Spain has wasted the strategic neutrality it had with the Western Sahara and this takes away a tactical and diplomatic advantage from us in any future crisis scenario. In this scenario, Israel’s alliance with Morocco is a worrying indicator for us," said a Spanish army official to El Confidencial. For another, "Israel is a means for Morocco to modernize its arsenal more quickly, to strengthen its relationship with the United States and to add pressure to the bilateral relationship with Spain." Other military personnel interviewed fear that the urgency of the war in Ukraine will cause Europe and NATO to ignore the southern flank.

For his part, Javier Jordán, professor of political science at the University of Granada, explains that "a scenario of armed conflict with Morocco is very unlikely, even if the war in Ukraine shows us that it is not impossible. The concern is the game in the gray area, this rivalry below the threshold of war with hybrid strategies using migration, the economic strangulation of Ceuta and Melilla..." With its alliance with Israel, Morocco, compared to Spain, is gaining ground in terms of deterrence and also diplomatically as a privileged partner of the United States in the region, analyzes the expert.

"Considering the Moroccan defense industry and armed forces, it is in our interest that Morocco be a strong friendly country in North Africa," says retired army general Juan Montenegro, former Spanish representative on the NATO and EU military committees. Since the normalization of relations with Israel, Morocco has acquired several Israeli drones, including the Harop kamikaze and the Heron, WanderB and ThunderB reconnaissance drones, and Hermes 900. The two countries plan to set up two drone and munitions manufacturing plants in Morocco.

In addition to the Israeli drones, Morocco also has Chinese (Wing Loong), Turkish (Bayraktar TB2) and American (MQ-A1 Predator and MQ-9B SeaGuardian) drones. The kingdom is also said to have acquired the Israeli Iron Dome and the Israeli Barak MX air defense system. Morocco’s military budget reached 5 billion euros this year. But it is still far from the Algerian military budget of around 10 billion euros, or the more than 12 billion euros of Spain.