Qatar and Russia are most likely to enter a cyber tech agreement

Russia’s military forces ,including cyber and intelligence capabilities makes Russia a large and sophisticated foreign power in the Middle East particularly in Syria and in the Persian/Arab Gulf already.

Going by the available opinions, Iran’s cyber programme is considered to be less advanced in comparison to US, China and Russia. Apparently, in order to upgrade its cyber capability Iran is now joining hands with Russia for cooperation in cybersecurity and information technology which is likely to create new hurdles for the United States and its allies in the Middle East.

In last two months, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This is a clear sign that Russia is interested in not establishing just good relations with one power bloc. Russia is eyeing to create its technological dependencies in the region in exchange for some control over region’s oil and gas supplies as it has a vital stake in the future of the global oil and gas marketplace.

Russia is already known to have disseminated information in Middle East using two news prime channels RT Arabic and the Sputnik News Service use them as a tactic for information warfare capability to advance its foreign policy goals in the Middle East.

On the other side, countries in the Middle East are heavily investing to safeguard themselves from cyber warfare and some are even creating the capacity to carry out cyber offensives as a pre-emptive means for defence and deterrence.

Though, Qatar is one of the smallest states in the Middle East, surrounded by much larger powers.In order to protect Qatar’s sovereignty and security, officials in Doha have historically depended upon foreign support for defense.

For instance, Qatar took help from other countries for expanding its cyber offensive capabilities. For example, Qatar signed a bilateral agreement with Turkey to boost its cyber capabilities. Qatar also had a relation with Global Risk Advisors (GRA),a US consulting firm to hack emails of republican fundraiser’s Elliot Broidy.

Recently, Qatar also signed an agreement with Leonardo, an Italian firm for providing cyber training to Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) for strengthening the resilience of digital infrastructure against potential cyber-attacks and also builds its team of cyber experts to also execute such attacks.

Today, Qatar relies largely on its ties with Washington,Turkey,Russia for domestic security. Doha’s strategy for international security, however, hinges on embracing a host of states as defense partners, pitting their competing geopolitical interests against one another, and advancing Qatar’s national interests in the process.

Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the Russian Federation H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Nasser Al Thani (pictured) said that the visit of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to Moscow in March 2018, and the talks His Highness held with HE the Russian President Vladimir Putin was the most important factor in developing ties between Qatar and Russia, noting that the fact that the two countries are World Cup hosts helped enhance cooperation in more fields.

Given the regional power dynamics, there a high possibility that Russia would have a bend to establish cooperation with Qatar instead of other allies given both the countries have a need for each other’s resources. For instance, Qatar is actively looking for upgrading and developing its cyber offensive capabilities while Russia has a need to have some control on oil and gas reserves. Both may support each other to gain mutually.