American Rapprochement With Algeria Worries Moroccan Makhzen Regime

A specialized American study has examined the position of the American administration during the era of the current president, Joe Biden, on relations with Algeria and the connections of this position with the Sahrawi issue, and has recorded the changes that have occurred in Washington’s approach to issues that affect relations between Algeria and the Moroccan regime.
The study was published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and prepared by Sabina Heinberg, a specialist in issues related to political transformations in North Africa and a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and Amin Goulidi, a researcher in political security geography, at King’s College, London.
The study states that Washington “has been actively interacting with Algeria, as evidenced by the visit of US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Josh Harris to the region in September and his meeting with senior Algerian officials and Polisario Front leader Ibrahim Ghali.
The study noted that “these meetings showed that the American administration will adopt a precise approach to the Western Sahara conflict, which lowers Rabat’s expectations of absolute American support on this issue. It also touched on the Moroccan regime’s concerns about Algerian-American relations, which are experiencing a kind of dynamism during the current administration’s era, especially in light of the developments taking place in the Palestinian issue and the Sahrawi issue, including in this context: “The Gaza war and the escalation of the Polisario attacks could complicate this strategy.”
The study further explains: “Increasingly concerned officials in Rabat may interpret initiatives toward Algeria and Brahim Ghali (the Sahrawi president) as a departure from U.S. commitments under the Tripartite Agreement (the Abraham Accords between the Moroccan regime, the Zionist entity, and the United States of America).”
The study did not rule out that “this noticeable shift (in the American position) would undermine the Kingdom’s broader bilateral relations with both Washington and the Zionist entity,” or in other words, that the Moroccan regime does not view with satisfaction the growing relations between Algeria and the United States of America, embodied in the repeated visits of American officials to Algeria, a fact that does not reflect the objectives of the tripartite alliance under the guise of the so-called “Abraham Accords.
The Moroccan Makhzen regime had relied on its participation in the Abraham Accords to win over the United States of America and even tried to push it into taking positions hostile to Algerian interests in light of the worsening crisis between Algeria and Rabat since the severing of diplomatic relations between them. Washington, however, let the Moroccan regime push hard, in the direction of normalization, even if it reaches the point of no return, it returns to square one, which is to preserve the privacy of its relations with Algeria.
What has been said in this study confirms a change in the American position under the current American administration, which returned to Washington’s traditional position on the Sahrawi issue as soon as former President Donald Trump left the Oval Office more than three years ago, an approach that the Moroccan regime did not like, but it remained unable to influence him.