On June 26, 2025, two influential members of the US Congress, Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, and Jimmy Panetta, a Democrat from California, announced that they had officially introduced a bill to blacklist the Polisario Front as a foreign terrorist organization.
Entitled the Polisario Front Terrorist Designation Act (H.R. 4119), the bill marks a historic step forward in the United States’ recognition of the dangerous, illegal and mafia-like nature of the pro-Algerian separatist movement.
The announcement came in a post on Wilson’s official account on the X platform, where he stated that the Polisario is a “Marxist militia backed by Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia,” providing “a strategic outpost for Tehran in Africa and destabilizing the Kingdom of Morocco, a U.S. ally for 248 years.”
Wilson added, “I am proud to introduce bipartisan legislation with Democratic Congressman Jimmy Panetta to designate the Polisario as a foreign terrorist organization!”—a sign of a rare cross-party consensus in the U.S. Congress targeting a group seen as opposed to American interests.
Wilson based his proposal on a wide array of documents and reports alleging the Polisario’s involvement in terrorist activities and alliances with U.S. adversaries such as Iran. Among these are images of Polisario militants holding up a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1980, which the proposal claims aimed to gain Iranian support for the separatist movement.
The bill is based also on well-documented facts: the Polisario’s unilateral breach of the September 1991 ceasefire; its proven links with entities classified as terrorists, such as groups affiliated to the jihadist organization as Daech in the Sahel; and the systematic looting of diverted international humanitarian aid in the Tindouf camps, a veritable lawless zone under Algerian military control, where tens of thousands of Saharawis have been sequestered for almost half a century.
Even more recently, American reports have referred to Iranian arms transfers, including drones, being channelled to the Polisario with the tacit complicity of the Algerian regime. These revelations reinforce the analysis of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based strategic think tank, which for several weeks has been advocating the designation of the Polisario as a terrorist group, as part of a broader effort to contain the Teheran-Moscow-Alger axis in North Africa.
The legislation is expected to be referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, before being voted on by the full House. If passed, it would mark a historic shift in the U.S. legislative stance on the Western Sahara dispute and bolster Morocco’s position on the international stage against foreign-backed separatist agendas.