Daily Times

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Morocco on Tuesday to discuss regional security and meet the United Arab Emirates de facto leader Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

The trip comes in the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which along with sanctions has sent wheat and fuel prices soaring in a serious blow for import-dependent North African countries. “We know this pain is keenly felt in the Middle East and North Africa, where most countries import at least half of their wheat,” State Department Acting Assistant Secretary Yael Lempert said before the trip.

Blinken flew in late Monday from Israel where he had joined top diplomats from the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and Egypt for a meeting that underlined a seismic shift since 2020 in relations between Arab countries and the Jewish state. On Tuesday, he started talks with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, with the Western Sahara dispute and security cooperation on the agenda — including the fight against the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda in the Sahel.

The same subjects will loom large in meetings the following day with Morocco’s regional rival Algeria. Blinken will also meet Tuesday evening with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed — often dubbed “MBZ” — at the Emirati leader’s Moroccan residence, a meeting that comes as Washington warily watches longtime ally the UAE diverging from many of its policies.

The UAE has refrained from criticising Russia, recently sent its top diplomat to Moscow, and hosted the Russia-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Blinken and Prince Mohammed are set to discuss efforts to revive the 2015 landmark Iran nuclear deal, which aimed to limit Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for loosening sanctions — an agreement dropped by former US president Donald Trump in 2018. Their meeting also comes amid an escalation in cross-border missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels against the UAE and Saudi Arabia, allies in a grinding war that has laid waste to the impoverished nation with no end in sight.