1777–1787 On 20 December 1777, Sultan
Mohammed ben Abdallah commissioned the
Dutch consul in
Salé to write letters to European merchants and consuls in
Tangier,
Salé,
Larache and
Mogador stating that vessels sailing under the American flag could enter Morocco's ports, alongside those of European countries with which Morocco had no diplomatic ties, such as
Russia and
Prussia, under the same conditions as those enjoyed by the nations that had treaty relations. Information about the Sultan's desire for friendly relations did not reach
Benjamin Franklin, the American emissary to the
Kingdom of France in
Paris, before April 1778 at the earliest. Sultan Sidi
Muhammad Ibn Abdullah actively sought to have an American diplomat negotiate a formal treaty, but meanwhile Moroccan pirates threatened American merchant shipping in the
Mediterranean Sea. Finally,
Thomas Barclay, the American consul in France, arrived in Morocco in 1786. There, he negotiated the
Moroccan–American Treaty of Friendship with Sidi Muhammad, Sultan of Morocco, which was signed on June 23, 1786. The Treaty was signed in
Europe by American diplomats
John Adams and
Thomas Jefferson and ratified by the
Confederation Congress (under the
Articles of Confederation government which preceded the current
constitutional government) in July 1787. One of the many letters between American and Moroccan officials was written by the first U.S. President
George Washington to Mohammed Ibn Abdullah. On December 1, 1789, eight months into his presidency, Washington wrote on his authority and leadership of the United States as well as the miscommunication between Morocco and America. In the letter, Washington expresses his regrets in lack of punctuality but clarifies that the untimely response was due to a change in government and the desire to communicate on solidified terms. Washington also shows appreciation for Mohammed Ibn Abdullah's diplomatic initiative tactics in the protection of American ships from pirates. These actions are appreciated because of the lack of power the United States as a country had held at the moment. Morocco was the first
Berber, Arab, African, and
Muslim state to sign a treaty with America. America lacked a navy at the time and was unable to defend its ships in the Mediterranean.
Abd ar-Rahman In 1826, Sultan
Abd ar-Rahman intervened on behalf of
Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori, a Muslim
Fula nobleman enslaved in the US, after having read a letter Sori had sent to his family in Africa.
Andrew Jackson capitalized on this event in his campaign against President
John Quincy Adams before the
presidential elections held in 1828.
Late 19th and early 20th century At the end of the American Civil War, the first international convention ever signed by the United States, the
1865 Spartel Lighthouse Treaty, dealt with a navigational aid erected on the Moroccan side of the
Strait of Gibraltar. The Treaty, which was ratified by Morocco, U.S. President
Andrew Johnson, and nine European heads of state, granted neutrality to the lighthouse, with the condition that all ten signatories to the agreement assumed responsibility for its maintenance. During the
First Moroccan Crisis, as European colonizers gazed hungrily at Morocco's resources and strategically located harbors, the United States strongly defended the Kingdom's right to its continued sovereignty at the Conference of Madrid (1880) and the
Treaty of Madrid (1880), and again at the
Algeciras Conference in 1906. In fact, the European powers were edging towards engaging in a continental war over Morocco in 1905. President
Theodore Roosevelt played an important role in settling the affair during the 1906 Algeciras Conference.
Elihu Root, his Secretary of State, declared, "Fair play is what the United States asks - for Morocco and for all the interested nations - and it confidently expects that outcome." President Roosevelt offered a compromise plan which the European powers accepted. The proposal granted Morocco a greater deal of autonomy and allowed for all European nations to trade with Morocco. In 1912, after Morocco became a protectorate of Spain and France because of Moroccan leadership mismanagement, American diplomats called upon the European powers to exercise colonial rule that guaranteed racial and religious tolerance.
World War I – World War II During
World War I, Morocco was aligned with
Allied forces. In 1917 and 1918, Moroccan soldiers fought victoriously alongside U.S. Marines at
Chateau Thierry,
Mont Blanc, and
Soissons. With France occupied by the
Nazis during
World War II, colonial
French Morocco was under the control of
Vichy France, which was aiding the
Axis powers. When the Allies invaded Morocco on November 8, 1942, as part of
Operation Torch, the defenders yielded to British and American forces. Shortly after the surrender and defection of Vichy forces in Morocco, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a message to Morocco's King, H.E. Mohammed V, commending him on the "admirable spirit of cooperation that is animating you and your people in their relationships with the forces of my country. Our victory over the Germans will, I know, inaugurate a period of peace and prosperity, during which the Moroccan and French people of North Africa will flourish and thrive in a manner that befits its glorious past." ,
Robert D. Murphy,
Harry Hopkins,
Hassan II, General
Nogues,
Muhammad al-Muqri, the Moroccan Chief of Protocol,
Elliott Roosevelt, and
John L. McCrea. In what was to be the most pivotal meeting of Allied leaders during World War II, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, and Free French commander General
Charles De Gaulle met for four days in the Casablanca suburb of Anfa in January 1943 to discuss the occurring war. During the
Casablanca Conference, the Allies agreed that the only acceptable outcome of the conflict was the "unconditional surrender" of the Axis forces. President Roosevelt also conferred privately with King Mohammed V to assure him that the United States would support Morocco's quest for independence from France. Moroccans would fight alongside Americans, notably in the form of the
Moroccan Goumier units, for the remainder of WWII.
1944–1955 Following the end of World War II, the
US military maintained several installations in Morocco because the Mediterranean had become central to the country's European defense strategy. This was made possible by the French government, which had granted the United States several naval and air bases in its North African protectorate. This development brought about the stationing of an increasingly large number of soldiers on Moroccan soil. Many of these servicemen were eventually approached by Moroccan nationalists who sought to internationalize their struggle for independence. In February 1946, , a Moroccan nationalist politician, co-founded the "Roosevelt Club," which aimed to regularly bring together prominent Moroccans as well as US diplomats and army officers supporting Moroccan self-determination. Their first public meeting, held on April 12, 1947, in the
Tangier International Zone, was attended by over 200 Moroccan nationalists from across the entire country, as well as about 50 US diplomats. Subsequently,
Tangier became a hub of the nationalists' global advocacy campaign due to the city's status as being outside of the control of the colonial powers, which enabled the Roosevelt Club to engage in a wide range of activities that brought their case to the attention of both domestic and foreign audiences. In November 1957, King
Mohammed V traveled to Washington to pay an official call on President Eisenhower. Two years later, Eisenhower's vice president
Richard Nixon traveled to Rabat to meet with the King. In 1961, King
Hassan II, Mohammed V's successor, made the first of several diplomatic visits to the United States to confer with President
John F. Kennedy. King Hassan II would later journey to Washington to meet Presidents
Lyndon B. Johnson,
Jimmy Carter,
Ronald Reagan,
George H. W. Bush, and
Bill Clinton. During the
Cold War, Morocco remained officially non-aligned. However, unlike most other Arab states, Morocco displayed pro-Western sympathies. Indeed, one month after conducting joint military exercises with Morocco off the coast of Western Sahara in 1986, then-Secretary of Defense,
Caspar Weinberger, visited Morocco to thank King Hassan II for his efforts in the
Arab–Israeli normalization process, and for seeking to mediate the United States' clash with Libyan leader
Muammar Qaddafi in the
bombing of Libya. In 1987, the Moroccan government agreed to the use of an old abandoned U.S. Strategic Air Command Base at
Ben Guérir as a transoceanic abort landing site for
NASA's space shuttles during emergencies. On the military side, Morocco signed agreements with the U.S. government allowing U.S. forces access and transit rights to Moroccan Air Force bases. Moreover, Morocco was a major beneficiary of
U.S. aid throughout the Cold War, receiving more than 400 million dollars in American aid between 1957 and 1963. In 1966, Morocco became the fifth-largest recipient of US agricultural assistance; the country had obtained more than $1 billion in military assistance and $1.3 billion in economic assistance by 1990, which amounted to more than one-fifth of the entire U.S. aid to all African countries during this period. In return, the Moroccan authorities signed a secret agreement permitting the United States to maintain powerful radio transmitters near Tangier, which served as communication and spying tools in the western Mediterranean. The
CIA and the
NSA acted with impunity from Hassan II's regime in return for their assistance. After the September 11 attacks, Morocco has been instrumental in supporting the United States. For example, King Mohammed VI presided over a mass service in support of the victims of the September 11 attacks. Additionally, security cooperation between the two countries is well developed. King Mohammed VI collaborates with U.S. intelligence and security officials in providing intelligence and preventing
terrorist attacks in the Straits of Gibraltar. In January 2004, Morocco was designated a
major non-NATO ally as a reward for its collaboration. Morocco also plays a pivotal role in the
Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative to contain
Islamist Insurgency in the Maghreb and in the Sahel. Likewise, when
Casablanca was the victim of
terrorist bombings on May 16, 2003, the U.S. government offered Morocco the full resources of its military and intelligence community. Furthermore, the
CIA has utilized Morocco as a source for recruiting
Arabic-speaking
spies. The United States and Morocco signed a
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on June 15, 2004, which went into effect on January 1, 2006. The Kingdom of Morocco submitted an official statement on the matter for a U.S. House of Representatives Congressional Hearing in June 2007. It read, in part, "Morocco is pleased to see that the United States has over the last several years very substantially increased its engagement in the Maghreb. Morocco is a longtime partner of the United States and our experience with your great nation over the last two centuries has persuaded us that there is much that we can accomplish together. The FTA between Morocco and the USA is a great opportunity for US companies to increase their market shares …" The FTA also stipulates broad labor protections for both countries, with a dual focus on transparency and maintaining said protections while promoting economic growth. The explicitly defined protections laid out in the Labor section of the agreement are essentially the general rights promoted by the
International Labor Organization in their 1998 declaration; however, the Labor section also provides a framework by which the countries may cooperate to extend labor rights further. The developments listed as potentially pursuable include the establishment of "social safety net programs," regulation of "working conditions," and "timely" creation of "labor market statistics." In 2008, U.S. direct investment in Morocco was about 7%, and U.S. aid to Morocco was about 4%. In 2017, US direct investment in Morocco had risen to 21.4%. On December 22, 2009, the United States government awarded
Lockheed Martin an $841.9 million contract to complete the production of 24
F-16 aircraft for Morocco. The contract added to an initial $233 million awarded to Lockheed Martin in June 2008 to begin production of the aircraft. According to the NNSA, "Enhanced international cooperation with Morocco is an important step in countering [the] threat [of terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon]." In March 2010, Morocco expelled U.S. citizens (as well as citizens from the Netherlands, South Africa, and New Zealand) who were staffing an orphanage. They were
accused of spreading Christianity (which can be practiced but not evangelized in Morocco) and ordered to leave immediately. This resulted in the U.S. Ambassador to Morocco
Samuel L. Kaplan declaring that Morocco's actions "violate fundamental rules of due process." He further stated that the United States was in "distress" about the decision. On July 19, 2021, the U.S. Department of State under the
Biden Administration released Moroccan national
Abdul Latif Nasir from the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp into the custody of his home country. A State Department spokesman stated, "The United States is grateful to the government of Morocco for its willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility." On March 7, 2024, President
Joe Biden welcomed
Youssef Amrani at the White House, where he presented his credentials as the Ambassador of Morocco to the United States. Following the reception, Amrani expressed his commitment to work in accordance with the directives of King Mohammed VI to deepen the historical and strategic alliance between Morocco and the United States. In the military field, as part of the 13th session of the Defense Advisory Committee, the Inspector General of the Royal Armed Forces and Commander of the Southern Zone received, on May 20, 2024, at the General Headquarters of the Royal Armed Forces in Rabat, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Ms.
Celeste Wallander. She was accompanied by the U.S. military attaché accredited in Morocco, leading a significant military delegation to discuss security and defense challenges in Africa, combating transnational threats, as well as developments in equipment procurement. == Diplomatic missions ==