Morocco cut off diplomatic relations with Iran on Friday, accusing Tehran in a rare public spat of trying to spread Shiite Islam in this Sunni Arab kingdom.
The tensions were compounded by recent Iranian comments toward Sunni-led Bahrain that have raised hackles in the Arab world, Morocco’s Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry accused largely Shiite Iran’s embassy in Rabat of trying to “alter the religious fundamentals of the kingdom” and threaten Morocco’s religious unity.
The ministry, in a statement, called Iran’s actions “intolerable interference in the internal affairs of the kingdom.”
Iranian officials could not immediately be reached for comment after Morocco’s Friday night announcement.
The Moroccan press has repeatedly accused the Iranian embassy of proselytism in recent years. The Iranian ambassador denied the charges as recently as last week.
There are officially no Shiite Muslims in this North African kingdom, which is more than 99 percent Sunni, with the remainder of the population Jewish or Christian.
King Mohamed VI is the “commander of the believers” in the country, and the Foreign Ministry’s statement equated attacking Moroccan religious unity to challenging the monarch.
Many Arab states have grown frustrated with Iran’s hard-line leadership in recent years.
Morocco’s move could be “a sign that Arab states are prepared to take a much tougher stand against Iran,” Anthony Cordesman, a Middle-East analyst at the Washington-based Center for International and Strategic Studies, said by telephone. Or at least states “not directly threatened by it.”
While small Middle Eastern states are trying to soothe their relations with Iran because of the country’s traction around the Persian Gulf, Morocco on the Atlantic coast is far from the tensions.
“It’s almost as if we’re seeing a polarization of the Arab world,” Cordesman said.
Moderate states and US allies like Morocco, Egypt or Saudi Arabia are increasingly irked by Iran’s hard-line leadership, and worried by the political clout Tehran is gaining through the successes of the Shia or even Sunni groups it backs in Iraq, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Morocco’s king entertains strong ties with other Arab sovereigns, including Bahrain’s sultan, whose legitimacy was recently questioned by Iran.
Morocco offered its “full support for the unity and territorial integrity of the brotherly Kingdom of Bahrain,” a Foreign Ministry statement said last week.
“Morocco is astonished by the odd treatment the kingdom has been subject to by Iranian authorities,” the ministry said after a prominent Iranian figure made comments last month perceived as a threat to Bahrain’s sovereignty.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home