While Morocco has not commented officially yet on the current Iranian crisis, Moroccan Shiites broke their silence, denouncing the death of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Moroccan political parties have not paid much attention to the current Middle East crisis that followed the death of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike on 3 January 2020 in Baghdad. While Morocco has not issued an official statement, commenting on Soleimani's death, Moroccan Shiites have referred to the Iranian general as a «martyr». Most of them took to the internet to denounce his death. Thus, Moroccan Shiite Driss Hani said, on his Facebook page, that «Hajj Soleimani was the father watching over all the factions of the Palestinian resistance and [was] present in all their operations». He added that the Iranian general remained «a patriotic man who set an example; that of a man who believed in national liberation movements in a region filled with traitors». «He was killed within the battlefield and he had been seeking for years to be a martyr on the front lines. He has thus transformed himself, inside Iran, and within factions of resistance in the Middle East, into an icon of national liberation», he concluded. Moroccan Shiites slam those who hailed the death of Soleimani For his part, Abderrahman Chougrani, president of the Shiite association «Ressalis progressistes» (not recognized by the authorities), described the day of the Iranian general's death as a «pivotal day». «Many masks will fall and the infidels will be ashamed. The enemies are now known», he wrote on his Facebook page. He described these enemies as «Zionists, Wahhabis, Muslim Brotherhood memebrs and the rest of the Sunni ISIS factions». Meanwhile, Shiite activist Issam Hassani has decided to respond to «affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood groups in Morocco», that is, those who described Qassem Soleimani as «an assassin in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen». «Those who have killed people [in the aforementioned countries] support and defend defenders your way of thinking», he argued, referring to the Muslim brotherhood. «You are the biggest criminals, the most dangerous ones. You are not entitled to define the concepts of Islam, or to pretend that you are the preachers». Issam Hassani The same thing goes for Moroccan Shiite activist Mohamed Mohammadi. «We can disagree on political positions and in the way of analyzing certain events, but shaking hands with Zionist imperialism and identifying with it is stupidity and madness. You can't just disagree with idiots and fools, you have to distance yourself from them», he wrote on his Facebook page. The position of anti-normalization activists with Israel was not much different from that of Shiites. In fact, the National Working Group for Palestine in Morocco published a press release qualifying the American raid as «harassment, terrorism and a violation of the sovereignty of Iraq against all international conventions, laws and standards». The group condemned the «major terrorist crime», linking it to the «Deal of the century». Soleimani compared to Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka In the political scene, Omar Iharchane from Al Adl Wal Ihsane as well as Socialist Democratic Vanguard Party (PADS), a Moroccan political party, commented on the death of General Qassem Soleimani. On his Facebook page, the member of the association political bureau said that he did not agree with «the work of Qassem Soleimani in Syria», recalling however that he played a major role in helping the Palestinian resistance in Palestine and Lebanon. «We had to draw attention to the dirty work that the American administration is doing in the region», he added. PADS is the only political party to have expressed its position on the death of the Iranian general. Comparing this «assassination» to that of Mehdi Ben Barka and other opponents around the world. The party denounced a «new crime of American imperialism against two great leaders of the Arab and Islamic resistance». For the record, the Middle East region is experiencing unprecedented tensions after Qassem Soleimani's death.
