Offensive acts of War by Iran have provoked the Arab Nation to hold an Unprecedented Meeting
“Our policy is… that if you mess with Israel, you will have to pay a Price” warning by Naftali Bennett (Israeli Prime Minister) to its rival nation (Iran) explained that Iran gains its leadership in every sphere, and become a threat among other Arab Nations.
Iran is known to utilize its cyber capabilities as a weapon to damage its enemies like Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Iranian cyber threat actors have continuously improved their cyber offensive capabilities which include website defacement, spear-phishing attacks, distributed denial-of-service attacks, destructive malware, and social media disinformation campaign.
Recently, an investigation conducted by the Israeli Military, found a cyber attack that appears to have targeted municipal public address systems rather than the military’s systems. The cyber -attack is suspected to link with Iranian hackers. As an exiled Iranian opposition group claimed that it had taken control of thousands of city’s surveillance cameras and many websites operated by Tehran’s municipality. This incident of cyber-attack comes around two years after cyber hackers targeted several water and wastewater facilities across Israel. Those attacks were also linked to Iran.
In regards to cyber warfare, It is admitted by Israel’s cybersecurity chief that Hezbollah and Hamas with the militant group is its most dominant rival, as the Cyberwar between Tel Aviv continues to grow. To prevent from the frequent cyber attacks by Iran, Gaby Portnoy (Head of The Israel National cyber Directorate) confirmed that Israel is constructing a “Cyber Iron Dome” which will utilize new technology to reduce cyber-attacks; also this new technology will provide new big data and AI overall approach to synchronize the real-time detection of the Nation.
Not only Israel but Saudi Arabia also became the target nation of Iran. Recently Yemen’s Houthis (an ally of Iran) launched attacks on Saudi’s energy facilities and Aramco’s petroleum products distribution station in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, causing a fire in two storage tanks, but no casualties.
In 2012, a computer virus was deployed to the computers of Saudi Aramco (Saudi state-owned oil company). The virus erased data on three-quarters of Aramco’s corporate Personal Computers including important documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, and files. The hackers replace all the important files with an image of a burning American flag. Immediately after the cyber attack, Aramco was forced to shut down the company’s internal corporate network, disabling employees, e-mail, and internet access, to stop the virus from spreading. The officials of United States intelligence claimed that the cyber attack was launched by Iran.
Offensive acts of War by Iran have provoked Israel and a number of Arab nations in the region to develop a joint mechanism and technology for detecting the attacks by Iran.
In March 2022, Gen Frank McKenzie (the head of U.S. Central Command) convened a secret meeting of top military officials in which the Israeli army chief held talks with other representatives including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, and Qatar.
According to the Reports of ‘The Wall Street Journal’, the meeting was held at Sharm El Sheikh (an Egyptian Resort) where Aviv Kochavi (Chief of staff of Israel defense Forces) with Fayyad bin Hamed Al-Ruwaii (Saudi Counterpart) and other military officials from Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates joined the meeting. The meeting was held with a motive to discuss about combating the shared threat of Iranian attacks.
It is clearly shown that the fear of Iran strengthens the ties between Arab nations, as today the States desire to acquire Israeli arms and defense technology like “Cyber Iron dome” to fight against the offensive cyber attack by Iran.
