Amos Yadlin said cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia is taking place secretly. Photo: Screenshot.

The director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies told France24 on Tuesday that cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel is taking place under the radar, and that both countries view Iran as a threat.

Amos Yadlin said:

When the Saudi defense minister wakes up in the morning and he looks at his problem, the threats that Saudis face, he looks at Iran, what they want to achieve in the Middle East [and] the nuclear ambitions of Iran; he looks at the negative actions of Iran in Syria, Iraq, in Yemen and in Lebanon. He looks at Hezbollah as a threat and he looks at ISIS as a threat. When the defense minister in Israel wakes up in the morning, he basically sees the same threats. This gives a lot of convergence interests that we can act upon. It is done below the screen, if there will be advances in the peace process with [Israel and] the Palestinians, I guess it can even go above the table.

Yadlin, who served as the head of Israel’s military intelligence between 2006 and 2010, also confirmed an Iranian claim that Saudi Arabia provided intelligence to Israel during the Jewish state’s war in Lebanon against Hezbollah in 2006.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no diplomatic relations, though reports have surfaced in the past suggesting cooperation against Tehran. It was previously reported that the Gulf nation gave Israel approval for its jets to pass through Saudi airspace in the event that it decided to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to Breitbart.