Nations do not spy on their friends. In May 2021, Moroccan intelligence used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to infect the cellphone of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez twice. Defense Minister Margarita Robles suffered the same breach the following month. Forensic evidence confirmed the attacks, part of a broader operation that targeted more than 200 Spanish mobile numbers during the acute Western Sahara crisis.

Morocco, now a pillar of the Abraham Accords and a respectful ally of the State of Israel, acted to protect its interests as Spain shifted policy on the disputed territory. Jerusalem, through its regulatory oversight of the NSO Group, holds visibility into these deployments. Thus, it is time to release any Pegasus-derived intelligence on Sánchez’s communications. Transparency is not retaliation. It is a strategic imperative in hybrid warfare where espionage, trade, and proxy conflict intersect.

Spain’s record since October 7, 2023, reflects a pattern of systematic hostility that fractures Western deterrence against the Iranian axis. On May 28, 2024, Sánchez’s government became one of the first in Europe to recognize a fictional Palestinian state, alongside Norway and Ireland—a move that rewarded Hamas’s massacre and undercut the momentum of Arab–Israeli normalization (exactly what Hamas’s October 7 attacks aimed at).

From the war’s earliest days, Madrid imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel. In fact, on October 8, 2025, the Spanish parliament codified it into law by a vote of 178 to 169. Notably, the government had initially sought to pass the legislation on October 7, 2025; only pressure from the political right forced a 1-day delay.

In effect, Madrid was maliciously willing to advance anti-Israel legislation on the anniversary of the biggest massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

The statute is sweeping. It bans all exports and imports of defense equipment, dual-use technology, and military materiel. It prohibits Israeli settlement goods, blocks fuel shipments and military transits through Spanish ports and airspace, and cancels major contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including Spike-LR2 missiles and PULS rocket systems valued at over $825 million. In sum, Spain’s anti-Israel posture has hardened into a central pillar of its foreign policy agenda.

In tandem, Spain’s Sánchez labeled Israeli operations in Gaza as genocide, recalled diplomats, blocked Israeli officials, and increased aid to Hamas’s Gaza and UNRWA to more than €150 million by early 2026.

The damage runs deeper. Spain actively supplies military equipment to Iran; the architect of the multi-front assault on Israel. Official data from Spain’s Secretary of State for Trade show that in 2024 and the first half of 2025, Madrid authorized €1.54 million in dual-use exports to Tehran. The shipments included detonators, explosives of types A, B, and E, chemical reagents, industrial control software, and high-precision computer numerical control machinery essential for missile and drone assembly. Nearly 70% went to state-linked Iranian firms.

Broader Spanish exports to Iran reached $198.72 million in 2024 alone, with machinery, industrial furnaces, and valves topping $80 million. Since Sánchez took office in 2018, sensitive dual-use transfers with military and nuclear-adjacent applications total roughly €7 million. These tools reach the very production lines feeding Iran’s proxy war machine.

This is geostrategic sabotage at a critical chokepoint. Spain commands the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow passage that carries 20% of global maritime traffic and 5 to 6 million barrels of oil daily. The Strait links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, channeling energy from Algeria and the Eastern Mediterranean into Europe. Spanish territory anchors the southern flank of NATO, where Iranian-backed migration networks, Hezbollah financing, and Houthi disruptions already test European borders.

By embargoing Israel, shielding Iran, and urging the European Union to suspend the 1995 Association Agreement, Sánchez fractures the alliance precisely when Tehran’s ring of fire strategy requires unity. The Association Agreement underpins more than €42 billion in annual two-way trade, as well as joint counterterrorism efforts, intelligence sharing, and defense research. Its human rights clause, now weaponized by Spain, risks unraveling decades of cooperation that kept the Mediterranean from becoming an Iranian lake.

In the 2026 Iran conflict, Spain prohibited the United States from using its military bases in the Spanish cities of Rota and Morón and shut down its airspace to allied aircraft supporting strikes on Iranian targets. Simultaneously, Spain permanently recalled its ambassador to Israel, citing Israeli “insults” while shielding the regime whose missiles and drones terrorized Cyprus, Turkey, the Gulf, and European energy security.

Indisputably, these steps do not reflect neutral diplomacy. They advance fragmentation at a moment when great-power competition, including the United States-China rivalry across the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, demands a cohesive Euro-Atlantic front.

The Pegasus files alter the calculus. The 2021 breaches coincided exactly with Spain’s pivot toward Rabat on Western Sahara, trading concessions for migration control and economic favors. Releasing relevant intelligence illuminates whether foreign compromise influenced Madrid’s anti-Israel trajectory.

In a hybrid conflict, where spyware and economic leverage blur diplomacy and coercion, opacity serves no ally. Sánchez’s government decried Pegasus intrusions when convenient yet now exports precision manufacturing tools to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism while demanding Israel face consequences under international law.

Geopolitically, this tests Israel’s deterrence. The Association Agreement is reciprocal, grounded in shared democratic values and strategic alignment. Spain’s embargo, transit bans, and alignment with Iran violate that spirit. Suspending the agreement’s trade and cooperation provisions, at a minimum regarding Spanish influence, restores proportionality. It signals to both Brussels and Madrid that undermining Israel’s survival carries costs. Europe’s southern flank cannot become the weak link exploited by revisionist powers.

Sánchez’s Spain has chosen sides against the region’s sole democracy fighting for existence and in tacit partnership with a regime whose aggression endangers the entire West. Jerusalem must answer with transparency, reciprocity, and clarity. Bibi, for the sake of the State, release Sánchez’s Pegasus file now.

Yes, Israel must establish a secure legal mechanism to ensure that any disclosure of this intelligence—whether to the public or to European legal authorities investigating the matter—does not jeopardize the NSO Group or place at risk the interests of its legitimate customers and consumers. However, this cutting-edge strategy requires a high degree of urgency because Spain under Sánchez has become a direct national security threat to the people of Israel, with the Spanish leader himself having low-key threatened the use of nuclear weapons against the Jewish state.

In conclusion, it is time for Jerusalem to demand suspension of the European Union-Israel Association Agreement until Spain reverses its embargo and transit bans, and show Madrid that in the post-October 7 reality, neutrality is an illusion and betrayal exacts a price.

The Mediterranean watches. History records who held the line.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)