RABAT —

In an interview with Breitbart last month, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita spoke of how Iran “infiltrated” Morocco via book festivals and voiced his country’s support of the Trump’s administration policies toward Tehran and concluded with directly requesting help from the Trump administration to face Iran.

The Moroccan Assabah daily recently published a report saying that Tehran sent hundreds of books to Moroccan libraries for free.

Bourita told Breitbart News that diplomatic relations between Morocco and Iran collapsed between 2009 and 2016 and explained how Iran distributed books to infiltrate the country.

“We used to have an Iranian cultural attaché in Rabat who has visited the small cities of Morocco making what he was calling book festivals. He was giving books. He was present in every small city,” Bourita said.

“We were asking ourselves why he has to promote the books of Iran there? And we noticed he was giving scholarships. We went from 10 people to 120 people (a year) who were given scholarships to study in Qom. From 2009-2016 we had no relations with Iran because of what they were doing with the scholarships,” he added.

The foreign minister also said that Iran was working to spread its ideology in the ranks of the Moroccan community in European countries especially in Belgium, adding that the first Moroccan Association for Shia Islam was created in Brussels.

Bourita also commented on the Lebanese party Hezbollah and said that it was not only a military threat but also an economic threat.

“You see Hezbollah as a military threat. In Africa we see it also as an economic threat. All the benefits to Iran from Hezbollah are being reinvested in Africa. They are buying hotels, supermarkets. So don’t underestimate what Iran is doing in sub Saharan Africa also through financial actions,” he said.

The minister added that Iran is in the process of expanding in the Sub-Saharan Africa. “In Cote d’Ivoire maybe the biggest mosque is a Shia mosque. This for us is the first attack against our interests,” he said. — Al Arabiya English