Bin Salman Called Netanyahu to Renew Saudi License for Pegasus Spyware

According to an investigative report by The New York Times, Israel used the spyware of NSO Group, the world’s most notorious maker of spyware, as a core part of its diplomatic policy and that US agencies were in talks to purchase the spyware and were offered a special software that could hack into any iPhone or Android smartphone.

According to the newspaper, the Israeli ministry for war affairs initially declined to renew Riyadh's license for NSO's spyware, citing the kingdom's abuse of the software - an apparent reference to reports that Khashoggi was tracked with Pegasus before his murder in October 2018. Khashoggi was an outspoken critic of bin Salman and a columnist for The Washington Post, whom Saudi operatives killed and dismembered in Istanbul in 2018.

Without the export license, NSO was unable to provide Riyadh with routine maintenance for the software, and the Saudi systems kept crashing.

After numerous calls made by Bin Salman's aides to NSO, Mossad, and the Israeli war ministry failed, the crown prince himself placed an urgent direct telephone call to Netanyahu, asking for the license to be renewed, sources familiar with the call told the newspaper.

Netanyahu, unaware of the license crisis until the phone call, immediately ordered the war ministry to resolve the issue. A ministry official then called NSO and asked to have the Saudi systems turned back on, a request that was rebuffed with a company compliance officer demanding signed authorization, according to the Times.

When the official then told the employee that the orders came directly from Netanyahu, the company accepted an email from the ministry and the Pegasus spyware was once again up and running in Saudi Arabia.

A day later, the war ministry delivered a permit to NSO's headquarters, according to the report.

Spyware diplomacy

Bin Salman's call to Netanyahu came before the announcement of a series of normalization agreements in 2020 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

A critical part of securing those agreements was getting permission to use Saudi airspace for the first time ever to fly commercial Israeli planes to and from the Persian Gulf.

The Pegasus spyware was first sold to Riyadh in 2017, for a fee of $55m, according to the report. Only a small team of senior defense officials working directly under Netanyahu took part in dialogue with Riyadh, all "while taking extreme measures of secrecy", a person involved in the affair told the newspaper.

"Keeping the Saudis happy was important for Netanyahu, who was in the middle of a secret diplomatic initiative he believed would cement his legacy as a statesman - an official rapprochement between Israel and several Arab states," the report said.

The newspaper's report found Israel had used NSO's spyware, which the group say is only sold to governments and which needs the Israeli government's permission to be sold, as a central pillar of its diplomacy over the past several years.

The sale of NSO software to a number of countries, including Mexico, Poland, and Hungary, had correlated with warming ties between those nations and Israel.

One of the relationships aided by the Pegasus software was that of Israel's ties with Persian Gulf countries, most notably the UAE, according to the Times.

The newspaper said Israel had authorized the sale of the spyware to the UAE after Mossad agents reportedly poisoned a senior Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel room in 2010.

Following the killing, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) ordered that security ties between Israel and the Emirates be severed. But in 2013, Israel offered MBZ the opportunity to buy Pegasus, and he accepted.

In a statement released by Netanyahu's office on Friday, the former prime minister denied the New York Times report.

"The claim that [then-]prime minister Netanyahu spoke to foreign leaders and offered them these systems in exchange for a political achievement or some other achievement is a complete lie," the statement said, as reported by The Times of Israel.

"All sales of this system or similar products from Israeli companies to foreign countries are made with the approval and supervision of the Defense Ministry, as required by Israeli law."