As the winds of Western Sahara diplomacy continue to blow in Morocco’s direction, this week has been marked by another crucial development for the seemingly, increasingly irreversible Moroccan momentum on this lingering territorial dispute.

Indeed, whatever one may think of Israel as a country, and regardless of the expected torrent of dismissive statements from Algeria, a dispassionate reading of MENA geopolitics suggests that the Israeli recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over its Western Sahara adds more strategic depth to Morocco’s ongoing annihilation of Algeria’s unrelenting lobbying for the creation of an independent state in southern Morocco.

Having said that, Morocco’s next strategic move should be to explore the possibility of buying the US-made F-35 fighters. Obtaining these fighters would permanently alter the military balance of power in the Maghreb in Morocco’s favor.

Despite the heavy investments Morocco has made in recent years to upgrade and reinforce its military, it still lags behind Algeria in terms of air power. Algeria’s petrodollars have enabled it to build a military edge over Morocco in this area.

In keeping with its determination to maintain its qualitative air superiority over Morocco, Algeria has engaged in negotiations with Russia with the view to buy the Su-75 Checkmate fighter jet. Manufactured by Russia’s Sukhoi, the Su-57 is equipped with stealth technology and is meant to rival the US-made F-35. Should Russia and Algeria’s negotiations come to fruition, the Algerian regime could obtain the fighter jet by 2029.

But this military edge that Algeria seeks to reinforce, could be shattered permanently in the event that Morocco succeeds in convincing the US to allow it to enter the select club of countries who are permitted to buy this state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jet.

It is an open secret that one of the basic tenets of US foreign policy in the Middle East is to allow Israel to maintain its qualitative military edge and superiority over its neighbors. All US administrations over the past decades have abided by this policy and abstained from striking any military deal that could erode Israel’s military edge over its neighbors.

This explains why, as of today,  Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have the sought-after F-35 jets in its arsenal. Sure enough, the US did sign in January 2021 a deal with the UAE that would have made the Gulf nation the first  MENA country to obtain this fifth-generation fighter. Yet the deal has been at a standstill because of a number of conditions that the Biden administration imposed on the UAE government.

Washington’s growing concern about Abu Dhabi’s evolving economic ties with China is the primary reason why negotiations between Abu Dhabi and Washington over the finalization of the sale and delivery of the F-35 have stalled. In other words, the US is also unhappy with the UAE’s strengthening of its trade and technology relations with China.

Additionally, the US is displeased with the contracts that some Emirati companies signed with the Chinese company Huawei to provide them with 5G technology. US officials fear that the deployment of the Huawei cell towers close to F-35 bases would enable China to steal information about the F-35 technology.

The diplomatic significance of Israel

Israel’s mediation was instrumental and indispensable for the UAE to engage in negotiations with the Trump administrations in relation to acquiring the F-35. Morocco could take this same approach,  and use its ever-growing ties with Israel as a stepping-stone to procure the sought-after F-35.

With Morocco’s growing security and military ties with the US — which reached a new milestone with the signing of a 10-year military agreement in 2020 — and its status as a major non-NATO ally, the course is clear for the North African kingdom to procure the F-35 fighter jets.

Make no mistake, as long as Algeria is governed by a military junta that is bent on destabilizing and destroying Morocco, there can be no normalization of relations between Algiers and Rabat. As long-time, keen observers of North African geopolitics will recall, Morocco has over the past few years made several attempts to extend an olive branch to Algeria, urging its leaders to usher the region in a new era of cooperation and a win-win partnership.

Morocco’s efforts have proved pointless in the face of Algeria’s deep-rooted obsession with undermining Moroccan territorial integrity in order to emerge as the Maghreb’s foremost and undisputed regional hegemon.

And so, given Algeria’s long history of hostility towards Moroccan institutions, history, and cultural heritage, it is ultimately unwise to expect any Algerian-Moroccan reconciliation in the near future.  Instead, Morocco’s attempts to find common ground seem to have exacerbated Algeria’s determination to antagonize Morocco. Guided by the same myopic and anachronistic worldview in which it sees itself as the hegemon of the Maghreb, Algeria views Morocco as the only major obstacle that stands in the way to realizing its goal of regional primacy.

Morocco – Algeria’s ‘useful’ scapegoat

With Algeria’s military persistence to use Morocco as a scapegoat and the culprit of setbacks it has suffered in recent years on the diplomatic, political, economic, and sporting fronts, chances of its leaders engaging in a military confrontation with Morocco remain high.

The conventional wisdom remains that despite their decades-long arms race, Algeria and Morocco are unlikely to engage in a direct confrontation given the devastating consequences such a war could have for both countries in particular, and for regional stability and security in general.

Still, it would be foolish to completely rule out the possibility, however remote or tiny, of a full-scale military showdown between Algiers and Rabat.

Indeed, in today’s context an unprecedented torrent of hostility and Morocco-bashing coming from Algeria’s media and politico-military establishment,  a hypothetical resumption of the Hirak movement in the country could push the top-brass military to go for a military confrontation as a way of deviating the attention of the Algeria people from their country’s economic and social woes.

Given the volatility and unreliability of Algeria’s military leaders, the only way forward for Morocco to prevail in this decades-long regional rivalry and to avoid this scenario is to have the military might that would deter Algeria from taking any actions that might endanger peace and stability in the Maghreb region.

In this tense and potentially explosive context, Morocco’s securing the F-35 and the subsequent, accompanying military and political backing from both the US and Israel appears to be the surest and best means of deterrence against Algeria.

Even in the event Algeria was to procure a Russian fifth-generation fighter jet, it would fall short of matching the qualitative air superiority that Morocco would be provided thanks to the cutting-edge technology of the F-35, which is far superior to that of the Chinese or the Russians.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has provided ample evidence that Russia’s military technology lags far behind its US counterpart. Experts blame Russia’s failure to achieve air superiority over Ukraine to flaws found in the Su-57, the first version of its stealth technology. And to date, there are no guarantees that the second version of Sukhoi’s stealth technology will not have similar flaws as those found in the first version.

Israel’s recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara has reinforced the ever-growing and irreversible global consensus that a political solution within the framework of Morocco’s sovereignty is the only way of bringing the dispute to a close and preserving regional peace and stability.

If the Moroccan government takes the necessary actions of further upgrading the country’s military’s firepower and operational capability in the coming months and years, not only will Morocco effectively preempt an Algeria-induced military confrontation in the region, but it would also — and perhaps more fundamentally so — be preserving the strategic and diplomatic breakthroughs it has achieved of late on the Western Sahara question.

Samir Bennis is the co-founder of Morocco World News. You can follow him on Twitter @SamirBennis.