Israeli and Saudi aligned towards balancing Iran’s power in the region by increasing cyber co-operation
“We don’t look at Israel as an enemy,” the statement by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman suggests that Israel and Saudi’s diplomatic tensions are getting diminished. Covert ties between both nations have warmed in recent years, as the Saudi Crown Prince has increasingly been seeing Israel as a strategic partner in the fight against Iranian influence in the region.
In recent weeks, Saudi invested $2 billion in the private equity fund established by Jared Kushner (American businessman and investor/son-in-law of Donald Trump). The fund with a total scope of $3 billion, intends to invest in Israeli conglomerates in various spheres of advanced technology.
This isn’t the first time that Saudi Arabia is investing in the firms of Israel. Another Donald Trump official, Steven Mnuchin (The Arabian principality) has invested in Israeli startups operating in the United States of America, along with the contracts of the American defense establishment, including the cyber conglomerates like Zimeprium and Cybereason.
The first cyber cooperation between Israeli and Saudi Arabia occurred in 2012 when Iran launched its self-developed Shamoon virus to hit Saudi Armco (Saudi Arabia’s oil Giant). The cyber-attack destroyed data from 30,000 devices connected to the network of the Oil giant, and also caused serious economic damage to the firm.
In dealing with such cyber-attacks by other nations, Israel’s cyber security firm came up with the decision to associate with Saudi Arabia. This cooperation also commenced in the counter-terrorism sector as Riyadh engages with IntuView firm of Israel which utilizes the power of artificial intelligence to monitor terrorist threats on social media platforms.
Israel is a hub for selling spyware tools worldwide. In the year 2018, Israel also offered its services to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the form of its spyware tools. The notorious NSO Group of Israel produced and sold a mobile phone spyware suite named Pegasus to Saudi Arabia, and the Nation utilized this software against Jamal Khashoggi to crush dissent.
Jamal Khashoggi’s death became the controversial reason for the cancelation of all contracts between the NSO group and Saudi Arabia. But Israeli government encouraged its notorious spyware firm to continue working with the Saudi Nation. Since then, Saudi has continued to use spyware to monitor dissidents and political opponents. In 2021, Israel again secretly authorized a group of cyber-surveillance firms to work for the administration of Saudi Arabia.
According to the Israeli media, since 2019 ‘Quadream’ (another cyber conglomerate of Israel) has been selling its iPhone spyware to Saudi Arabia. Quadream was originated in 2016 by three Israelis. The firm uses a front in Cyprus to sell its Reign spyware, which exports all the data from iPhone and activates the device’s camera with a microphone, and tracks the operator’s location without being in their knowledge.
Since 2012, both nations are aiding each other in the form of cyber ties and offering cyber-surveillance tools. As these cyber relations are very important for both nations to compete with their common rival ‘Iran’ in the domain of cyber warfare.
