Morocco and Algeria are observing the U.S. and Israeli attacks against Iran through the lens of the Western Sahara conflict. Washington’s latest attempt to resolve the long-running dispute over the former Spanish colony, through a round of direct dialogue launched last month in Madrid, is conditioning Rabat and Algiers’ response to the escalating conflict engulfing the Middle East.

Both North African countries have avoided condemning the bombings on Iranian soil amid ongoing diplomatic talks, which are scheduled to resume in Washington in May in a regional dispute that is about to turn 50 years old. Last year, the U.S. announced major investments by its companies in the Morocco-controlled Western Sahara, considered by the United Nations a non-self-governing territory.

Morocco—which severed relations with Iran in 2018 after accusing it of rearming the Polisario Front national liberation movement in Western Sahara—has once again ignored the attacks on a fellow Muslim state. Meanwhile, Algeria has reversed course on its earlier rejection of the U.S.-Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic conducted in June.

Instead Morocco, through its Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, has condemned Iran’s “atrocious” attacks against its Arab neighbors at the Arab League. However, this expression of solidarity with “brotherly Arab countries” failed to mention Lebanon, which is suffering a large-scale Israeli offensive, and also made no reference to the attacks against Iran, a Shia Muslim state. Rabat also holds Tehran responsible for “creating terrorist entities and groups.” The severing of diplomatic relations occurred eight years ago after the same minister accused the Ayatollah regime of sending anti-aircraft missiles to the Polisario Front, a group with which Morocco is waging a low-intensity war in the Sahara after the ceasefire between the two sides collapsed in 2020. Bourita also denounced the presence of military experts from Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian Lebanese Shia militia, in the camps of Tindouf, in southwest Algeria, which are home to Sahrawi refugees.

This “selective silence” about the attacks on Iran, as dubbed by the media, is viewed from different perspectives in the Arab countries of Northwest Africa. Besides fearing that the conflict in the Middle East will overshadow the search for a political solution for Western Sahara, the government in Rabat is examining the potential economic consequences for its own economic growth.

Morocco may be particularly affected by rising energy costs and spiraling inflation. Algeria, as a hydrocarbon-producing country, views the rising oil and gas prices as a blessing. With a projected 22 million visitors in 2026, Moroccan tour operators also fear a potential exodus of Western tourists, as holiday bookings are lagging due to ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where cancellations are already cascading.

Convened by the United States in Madrid and Washington following UN Security Council Resolution 2797, adopted on October 31, the Algerian government has agreed to dialogue—along with Morocco, the Polisario Front, and Mauritania—on the basis of “genuine autonomy” as the “most feasible” objective for a political solution to the Western Sahara conflict. While favoring Sahrawi independence through self-determination, Algiers now seeks to maintain its relationship with Washington to counterbalance the close alliance the U.S. and Morocco have established in the Maghreb region.

Escalation of rearmament

Over the past five years, Morocco has become the leading arms importer on the African continent, surpassing Algeria. The 2025 Global Arms Transfer Trends Report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows a 12% increase in arms imports by Morocco between 2021 and 2025, compared to the previous five-year period. Algeria experienced a 78% decrease during the same period, although SIPRI cautions that the secrecy surrounding its arms procurement operations may skew the figures. Its main suppliers are Russia (39%) and China (27%).

The United States is Morocco’s largest military supplier, accounting for 60% of imports, followed by Israel at 24%. U.S. defense authorization legislation explicitly conditions arms sales to Morocco on the maintenance of normalized relations with Israel. Rabat agreed to reopen its diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv in 2020, as part of the Abraham Accords signed during Donald Trump’s first term. In return, the Republican president recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

A widening chasm has opened between the Moroccan state apparatus—which seeks to preserve the assets of its relationship with Israel—and civil society, which has overwhelmingly expressed outrage at the images of Palestinian suffering in Gaza, revealing a latent crisis in the North African country. Following the Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran, groups of demonstrators have attempted to protest in the streets of Moroccan cities against the aggression on an Islamic country with which they feel connected through the umma, the community of Muslim believers cited in the Quran as an identity that transcends borders.

The protest marches were contained by a large deployment of security forces outside the parliament building in Rabat and in Tangier’s Iberia Square. The Justice and Development Party, an Islamist movement that led the government from 2011 to 2021, and the far left Federation of the Democratic Left have openly condemned the attacks, which they say violate international law.

A statement signed by several Moroccan ulama (Muslim legal scholars) along with other Islamic clerics from the region, cited by the online site Yabiladi, maintains that, despite the ideological clash between the Shiite Iranian regime and Sunni Muslim countries such as Morocco, “attacking Iran in an alliance of crusaders and Zionists constitutes an external aggression against a Muslim country, regardless of the regime that governs it.”

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When Iran began launching drones and missiles against Arab Gulf states in response to the US-Israeli offensive against Iran on February 28, much of the attention turned to the attacks on energy infrastructure. Saudi Arabia’s main refinery, Qatar’s largest liquefied natural gas export complex, an oil terminal in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain’s largest refinery were all targeted.

In the early hours of this escalation, however, other strategic facilities were also targeted in attacks that went largely unnoticed. In the early hours of March 1, an Amazon data center in the UAE was struck by a drone, the company reported. Shortly afterward, another center belonging to the American tech giant suffered a direct hit. And a short time later, a third, this time in Bahrain, was damaged by another drone strike.

Since Amazon is the preferred partner of many companies and governments in the region, the attacks caused immediate disruptions: customers of Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, one of the largest banks in the Emirates, had trouble accessing their online banking services; readers of the business news outlet Enterprise were unable to access its website; and users of the Careem app were unable to order a taxi or food delivery.

Iranian attacks against the digital ecosystems of its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf are considered among the first military actions of their kind in the world, and have exposed new vulnerabilities in these countries, including their multi-billion-dollar investment to become a hub for the development of artificial intelligence (AI). For Iran, it has been a cheap and effective way to disrupt public and private services, while for its neighbors in the region, it has served as a warning about their economic diversification strategies.

“Tehran didn’t choose these targets at random,” says Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) and author of the book West Asia: A New Grand Strategy for the Middle East. “Data centers are the backbone of the Gulf’s post-oil economic strategy, and Iran knows it,” he adds, so “attacking them was an attempt to sow doubt about whether the Gulf is a safe bet.”

Data centers are large physical facilities designed to store, process, and distribute massive amounts of digital data, and they are a key component of AI infrastructure. All the Gulf States have invested to varying degrees in the development of this technology and in transforming the region into a key hub for its global advancement, leveraging their geographic location between continents and access to both abundant and inexpensive energy, as well as the vast capital of their sovereign wealth funds. “This combination of location, energy and capital becomes a competitive advantage that is hard to match,” Soliman points out.

Leading this race are the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the two major Gulf powers. The Emirati initiative is spearheaded by G42, its main conglomerate specializing in AI development, chaired by the influential Tahnoon bin Zayed, a member of the royal family and the country’s national security advisor. The Saudi project is headed by Humain, backed by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and directed by Tareq Amin, the former head of technology at the state-owned oil company Aramco.

While oil and gas from the Gulf countries have historically been central to U.S. foreign policy in the region, in recent years its strong commitment to developing artificial intelligence has become increasingly important in its diplomatic ties. U.S. technology companies need the Gulf’s energy and capital, and the Gulf depends on access to America’s cutting-edge technology and talent to drive its plans.

In December 2025, the United States spearheaded an international agreement, Pax Silica, to promote a consensus on the economic security that must guarantee the artificial intelligence ecosystem of the future. Among the 10 signatory countries were the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg stated that “if the 20th century was based on oil and steel, the 21st century is based on computing and the minerals that power it.”

In May 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump undertook a four-day tour of the Gulf, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which was marked by the signing of energy and AI agreements. Leading U.S. companies in the sector, such as OpenAI, Nvidia, and Oracle, are developing a massive data center in Abu Dhabi in partnership with G42, and Amazon has become Humain’s main partner.

Theoretically, the location of technological infrastructure shouldn’t be as constrained as that of oil and gas, but as AI begins to expand on a large scale, the enormous data centers it relies on have become concentrated to make the massive supply of energy and connectivity they require more efficient. The recent attacks by Iran, however, have exposed their vulnerability and will force a rethink of how to protect them.

Nevertheless, Soliman believes the Gulf’s strategic ambitions will remain unaffected. “Iran’s decision to attack this infrastructure is the clearest sign that the Gulf’s AI ambitions are real and have consequences: military resources aren’t dedicated to hitting things that don’t matter,” he argues. “Their miscalculation,” he suggests, “is thinking that sovereign wealth funds with 50-year investment horizons will be scared off by a drone attack.”

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The video lasts 40 seconds. A speedboat focuses on one side of the oil tanker Safesea Vishnu, off the coast of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. It is midnight on Wednesday. The water is calm. A powerful explosion, followed by another one likely triggered by the first, sets the ship ablaze and sends up a huge plume of smoke. It is an attack. The small boat filming the scene waits a few seconds before speeding off northeast toward Iran. One of the crew members shouts: “God is the greatest. Destruction of an American oil tanker in the northern Persian Gulf. At your service, Khamenei!” As the camera captures the burning bow of the Safesea Vishnu, another cargo ship, the Zephyros, appears alongside. The two vessels were transferring cargo from one to the other. The spokesman on the speedboat identified himself as a member of the Naval Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a military pillar of the Iranian regime. A few hours later, the price of Brent crude oil exceeded $100.

The largest U.S. naval deployment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq has decimated the Iranian Navy. Washington has sent nearly 40% of its operational ships to the Middle East (16 warships plus the aircraft carriers USS Gerald Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln). According to the war report released Thursday by CENTCOM (the U.S. Central Command with jurisdiction in the region), approximately 60 Iranian frigates have been destroyed since February 28. This exceptional show of force, however, has proven insufficient in the face of Tehran’s asymmetric retaliation, as demonstrated by the attack carried out Wednesday night off the coast of Iraq.

Analysis of the video footage and the damage inflicted on the Safesea Vishnu suggests that the attackers used a naval drone to blow up the hull. The explosion damaged both cargo ships, which were moored side-by-side. This unconventional tactic has been used before with great success by the Ukrainian Navy to counter Russia’s powerful Black Sea Fleet.

The price for disabling a ship—the type and complexity of the naval bombs used by Iran are unknown, but the most sophisticated ones in the Ukrainian arsenal cost around $250,000—is low compared to the major blow dealt to the crude oil trading market on which the West depends. This is especially true given the target: according to records from the maritime traffic publication Lloyd’s List, the cargo ship that was hit is indeed owned by the American company Safesea Group.

South of Iraq, the waters of the Gulf flow toward the Strait of Hormuz, the heart of the current battle being waged between the United States and Israel against the Iranian regime. Its new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, reaffirmed on Thursday his intention to keep the waterway closed, under the de facto control of the Iranian armed forces—Oman, on the western shore of the strait, is unable to challenge Iranian supremacy in the region. Around 20% of the world’s traded crude oil passes through this strait. Its sellers are neighboring Gulf countries allied with the United States and, therefore, in Tehran’s crosshairs. Since the start of the Israeli-American offensive, traffic has been virtually blocked, with hundreds of ships waiting on both sides of the strait.

Iran holds the initiative in the Strait of Hormuz, while the United States struggles to extricate itself from the impasse and wage a maritime battle that is virtually unparalleled, both in terms of the weapons in use and the resources at stake. The strait’s narrowest point measures just over 20 nautical miles (39 km), but the navigable channel is less than 2.5 miles wide (4 km), a narrow and vulnerable space for mounting an escort to guarantee safe passage. “Defense vessels would have very little time to react to an imminent threat,” notes Mike Plunket, an analyst at the defence intelligence company Janes. According to his calculations, there are approximately 400 merchant ships waiting to pass. The U.S. Navy could provide about eight destroyers in the short term for escort duty. The result: it’s possible to form small convoys, perhaps with four or five merchant ships protected by two destroyers.

Beyond the risk and time such a solution would require, it would be insufficient to stabilize crude oil prices—to which must be added potential increases in rates from cargo ship insurers, something that shipping companies have experience with in Black Sea ports. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, after several contradictory messages earlier in the week, stated this Thursday that his country is not ready to implement a maritime escort, although perhaps it might be by the end of the month.

Plunket also points out that, while the Iranian Navy may have been significantly reduced, Tehran’s arsenal for asymmetric warfare includes so-called fast coastal attack craft, a flotilla of small, high-speed vessels under the control of the Revolutionary Guard. These boats, armed with machine guns and rocket launchers, similar to the one seen in the video of the attack on the oil tanker Safesea Vishnu, are used by the regime in a swarm-like fashion to harass and overwhelm large ships in the Gulf.

The report issued Thursday by CENTCOM estimated that approximately 30 Iranian minelayers had been damaged or destroyed in the nearly two weeks of the conflict. U.S. President Donald Trump himself threatened Wednesday to launch a fierce attack if his military found a single mine in the Gulf waters, a tactic former president Ronald Reagan used in the late 1980s after the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck one of these mines in the same waters. According to CNN and CBS, the Iranian Navy has already begun laying mines. So far, no incidents involving these devices have been reported.

Iran’s arsenals are estimated to contain around 6,000 mines of various types, from conventional surface mines to the most sophisticated ones lying on the seabed. Again, the challenge lies not in the type of munition—many of the U.S. frigates are equipped with mine-clearing systems—that can damage and disable a cargo ship, but rather in the effect of a single mine.

“Once a mine is discovered,” the Janes analyst continues, “you have to assume there are many more in the water. This means that the routes will have to be swept continuously to ensure there are no more. It requires specialized ships, equipment, and personnel, and it’s a very slow and dangerous process even in peacetime. If you add to that the possibility of the minesweepers themselves being attacked, the complexity increases.” Ukraine’s experience has once again shown how costly it is, in terms of both resources and time, to clear the waters of these types of devices. There are still access routes to the Black Sea in the south of the country where demining operations are currently underway.

And while the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked at Tehran’s discretion, as reported Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal and corroborated by the maritime traffic monitoring company TankerTrackers.com, Iran is now exporting more oil than before the start of the U.S. and Israeli attack.

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