Hello, welcome to another episode of Realpolitik. I am your host, Firasmodad. And today we're going to be talking about a bit of change that is happening in global logistics and in global trade and infrastructure and what that means politically and how things are working out.

And the starting point for this, I suppose, is what is happening in Morocco,

which is a bit of an interesting detail that not enough people pay attention to.

Now, Morocco has become a key partner for Israel and for the United States, and the reason for that is geography.

If you just look at where Morocco sits, it is right there at the very edge of the Atlantic, stuck next to

Algeria. On the other side, there's the water and then Spain. And it plays a pretty dominant role,

actually, in African politics. And people tend to ignore that. Morocco's banks and telecoms

companies especially are pretty widely spread out

all over the Sahel region. Countries like Mauritania, Mali, Coddivore, etc. They all have

Moroccan telecoms companies and or Moroccan banks.

And if you are looking at the Middle East from an Israeli perspective,

what it looks like is something like this.

You've got Iraq in the hands of Iran.

You've got Egypt, which we will talk about in a second or near the end of

this episode, which is a borderline hostile state. You've got Saudi Arabia, which for religious

reasons, can't really normalize ties with Israel fully. And for the most part, the rest of the countries are

hostile. I mean, there's a peace treaty with Jordan, but actually Israel wants to expel the

Palestinians of the West Bank into Jordan, and that will create a massive problem. There's Libya,

a basket case, Algeria, an absolutely hostile state.

Sudan, there was some expectation of Sudan normalizing with Israel. That failed. And so the main

partners for the Israelis are actually the UAE at the tip of the Gulf and close to the entrance of the Strait of Hurtemus

and Morocco. And the reasoning behind that is if you can get the countries that are far away

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