Morocco, one of the first countries to defuse protests associated with the Arab uprisings, has been termed the Middle East’s exception. What explains the short-lived nature of Moroccan protests? Existing explanations of Moroccan exceptionalism focus primarily on people’s fears or their respect for the monarchy’s legitimacy. Very few sources address the regime’s role in defeating these protests. These accounts usually advance cultural, institutional, and actor-based explanations. These explanations are significantly flawed, however, because they are rarely based on historical comparisons with past protests in the country, and they overlook the tactical nature of the monarchy’s response to protests. Drawing on theories of authoritarian resilience, this paper attributes the failure of Moroccan protests to the tactical nature of the monarchy’s response. Using a comparative historical approach, statistical comparisons, and within-case methods, this paper offers a systematic analysis of the Moroccan regime’s response to different types of protests and accounts for variation in the monarchy’s tactics. Specifically, it posits that the nature, severity, and leadership of protests shape regime reaction. This paper makes three contributions to studies of Middle Eastern politics. First, it uncovers a pattern of regime response to protest that undermines the concept of Moroccan exceptionalism by highlighting the monarchy’s systematic strategic tendencies. Second, through its historical perspective, it provides new empirical evidence that challenges arguments about the predictive effects of regime type and wealth on monarchical reactions to dissent. In doing so, this paper effectively distances the Moroccan case from common arguments of exceptionalism and brings it back into the broader theoretical debates of authoritarian resilience. Finally, this project contributes to the study of the relationship between resource wealth and regime survival by shifting the analytical focus away from the interesting, yet over-studied topic of traditional rentierism towards a more sophisticated theory of non-rent accommodation that applies to resource-poor countries such as Morocco.