Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is now demanding that the European Union suspend its association agreement with Israel. Jerusalem should welcome the move with open arms, but only on one firm condition: the suspension must remain until Spain ends its total arms embargo on the Jewish State and halts all military-adjacent support for Iran.

The 1995 association agreement supports over €42.6 billion in annual two-way trade. Irrationally, Sánchez’s call, backed by a petition signed by one million Europeans, accuses Israel of “violating humanitarian clauses”.

Yet, the hypocrisy runs deep.

Spanish trade records show that between 2024 and the first half of 2025, Madrid approved more than €1.3 million in dual-use exports to Iran, including detonators, explosives of types A, B, and E, chemical reagents, control software, and high-precision computer numerical control lathes, milling machines, and machining centers (nearly 70% went to Iranian state-linked firms tied to missile and drone programs).

Since Sánchez took power in 2018, Spain has authorized roughly $7 million in such dual-use technologies with clear military value. In 2024 alone, defense-related exports to Iran hit $198.72 million. Due to this, an Israeli legal group -right after my first article on this issue was published on the Middle East Forum- filed a formal complaint with the International Criminal Court against Sánchez for complicity in attacks on Israel.

Meanwhile, Spain enforces a sweeping arms embargo on the State of Israel, codified by parliament in October 2025, banning not only defense equipment and dual-use items but even the transit of potential military fuel across its territory.

Madrid went further, scrapping a €700 million contract for Israeli-designed systems—only to turn around and have its own Centre for Technological Development and Innovation grant a €305,973 loan to PAP Tecnos, a subsidiary of Israel’s Rafael, to develop a backpack integrating exoskeleton-like technology. This is not policy coherence; it is another display of Sánchez’s trademark arrogance.

Spain’s position grows even more compromised when one considers Morocco’s leverage. In 2021, Pegasus spyware—commercialized by an Israeli company and linked to Moroccan intelligence—hacked the phones of Pedro Sánchez, his defense minister, and his interior minister. The espionage occurred just before Spain’s sudden reversal on Western Sahara, where it endorsed Moroccan claims after decades of “neutrality.” This pattern raises grave doubts about whether Sánchez truly speaks for an independent Spain.

His credibility further collapsed in 2025 when he declared that Spain lacks nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, or large oil reserves and thus cannot halt Israeli operations alone. In other words, he low-key threatened the Jewish State with making it succumb if it were up to him.

Hence, Spain’s moral lecturing rings completely hollow when measured against its own enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. These North African cities, with a combined population of roughly 170,000 people and only 30.8 square kilometers in area, remain as Spanish colonial holdings on Moroccan soil.

Indeed, if Madrid demands decolonization from others, it must first confront its own occupied territories. Israel should answer Sánchez’s challenge decisively.

Jerusalem must fully sever diplomatic relations with Madrid. At the same time, it should dramatically deepen its Abraham Accords partnership with Morocco, including expanded military cooperation on Moroccan territory.

The most potent geostrategic response lies in the Strait of Gibraltar, the critical chokepoint through which 100,000 vessels pass each year, carrying more than 10% of global maritime trade. Israel and Morocco should jointly establish a permanent multidomain maritime awareness and rapid-response hub on Morocco’s northern coast, equipped with Israeli Heron drones, Barak air defense systems, advanced radar, and electronic warfare suites.

To directly counter Spanish pressure, Israel should focus on strengthening Morocco’s naval and coastal defense capabilities through joint projects in fast-attack craft, anti-ship missile integration, electronic warfare dominance, and integrated air-sea denial systems. This transforms the southern shore of the Strait into a fortified strategic flank before the liberation of Ceuta and Melilla takes place.

This past weekend exposed Pedro Sánchez’s true place in history. While Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado—the West’s new symbol of freedom, comparable to Lech Wałęsa—drew thousands of cheering supporters to a massive rally in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, Sánchez chose Barcelona and refused to meet the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, laying bare why his ministers have been cutting illegal deals with the Venezuelan dictatorship.

In the Catalan capital, and fresh from Beijing—where Sánchez endorsed the communists’ “one-China principle” amid escalating pressure on Taiwan and cast himself as a Western voice for Beijing—, he led an international anti-Trump summit alongside former M-19 terrorist leaders Claudia Sheinbaum and Gustavo Petro.

This unfortunate Ferdinand VII 2.0 moment in Spain’s history under Sánchez’s ideological betrayal has handed Israel both a mirror and a strategic opportunity. The question now is whether Jerusalem will seize it. It is locked, loaded, and ready.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)