Iran and Morocco’s World Cup soccer match on Friday and their broader struggle in Group B isn’t simply about sport. While the match will be played on grass, a desert-based conflagration will feature heavily in the eyes of supporters watching the game.
But while a struggle in the west African desert is the contemporary foreign policy contention, the tale of modern Morocco-Iran tensions begins at the birth of the Iranian Revolution and Morocco’s decision to grant asylum to the Iranian shah. That Moroccan action infuriated the Iranian revolutionaries, Islamic and otherwise, and set relations on an emotive and difficult course. Yet it wasn’t until last month that things took their latest downturn after Morocco cut diplomatic relations with Tehran.
Morocco did so in response to the provision of man-portable anti-air missiles by the Lebanese Hezbollah to the Polisario Front, a secessionist movement which operates in the disputed Western Sahara region to Morocco’s south. While Polisario and Hezbollah are not natural ideological partners, Hezbollah and its Iranian patron/overlord see the Polisario as a means of disrupting western interests under a pretense of shared Polisario-Hezbollah interest in national liberation (a key Hezbollah propaganda narrative).
So while these players will be focused on progressing in Russia by scoring goals on the grass, their respective governments and nationalist supporters see the World Cup as a chance to win pride in relation to a conflict in the desert.
