News- Middle East: A new investigative report has uncovered that Israel is using desalination and water technology projects as covert instruments to normalize relations and expand its strategic foothold in the Persian Gulf.

The findings by The Cradle suggest that Tel Aviv’s long-term objective is not just diplomatic acceptance but technological domination that will bind Arab states to Israeli infrastructure and dependence for decades to come.

According to the report, Israeli water giant IDE Technologies has systematically bypassed the Arab and Muslim world’s long-standing boycott through a Swiss front company, Swiss Water, which bid for major desalination projects while concealing IDE’s Israeli identity.

This shell arrangement allowed IDE to operate in “prohibited countries,” including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as nations that had no formal diplomatic ties with Israel before the 2020 Abraham Accords, such as Bahrain, Sudan, Oman, Morocco, and the UAE.

Through these covert partnerships, Israeli technology has quietly seeped into the infrastructure of states that publicly reject normalization. Swiss Water reportedly signed contracts worth tens of millions of dollars per project, while IDE supplied the core desalination technology and handled construction.

Today, IDE operates more openly through its regional headquarters in Dubai under the name IDE Meyah Water Solutions, marking Israel’s first permanent commercial footprint in the Persian Gulf’s critical water sector.

The report cites major projects such as the Red Sea desalination plant in Saudi Arabia, the Great Arabian Sea project in Pakistan, and multiple facilities in Kuwait and Oman.

Each project deepens the region’s reliance on Israeli innovation and infrastructure, granting Tel Aviv significant leverage over the Persian Gulf’s most essential resource—water.

“While headlines focus on political accords, it is through desalination plants and reverse osmosis systems that Israel is embedding itself at the heart of the Arab world’s survival mechanism,” the report stated.

“At the intersection of the Persian Gulf’s perpetual thirst and Israel’s technological edge, a new West Asia is being drawn—one increasingly shaped by Tel Aviv’s control over water.”

Analysts warn that this quiet expansion mirrors Israel’s historical strategy of weaponizing water as a tool of domination. Since its fabrication, Israel has fought wars to control water sources along its borders with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and has even pursued plans to divert the Nile River.

Israel is now exporting that control mechanism abroad, embedding its influence beneath the surface of Arab infrastructure.

Despite their public opposition to normalization, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have permitted Israeli-linked companies to secure strategic contracts through multinational tenders.

“It is a marriage of Arab capital and Israeli know-how, not driven by politics but by pressing water needs,” the report observed. “And as dependence deepens, Israel’s leverage expands.”

The investigation further highlights a parallel campaign of soft normalization—allowing Israeli-linked businesspeople to enter Persian Gulf states under alternate passports, opening airspace, and softening media and religious discourse.

These gradual shifts are designed to prepare Gulf societies for eventual open normalization, making the process irreversible once economic and infrastructural ties are firmly in place.

Experts caution that in West Asia—one of the driest regions on earth—water security equals national security. As Arab governments continue to outsource their most vital resource to Israeli firms, they risk ceding not only economic independence but also political sovereignty.

“The water flowing from IDE-linked plants in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait reflects a deeper shift underway across the Persian Gulf without the ceremony and summits, but forged quietly through contracts, infrastructure, and dependence," the report said.

Through desalination, Israel is turning the lifeblood of the Arab world into the architecture of its own regional dominance.

Source: Press TV