Director of Egyptian General Intelligence Maj. Gen. Abbas Kamel is expected to visit Israel in the coming days, amid efforts by Israel and Egypt to mediate between Saudi Arabia and the United States, the UK-based pan-Arab media outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported Tuesday.
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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US President Joe Biden have been off to a rocky start since the latter took office, as Washington has been particularly hard on the Gulf kingdom since the Oct. 2, 2018 assassination of journalist and dissident Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi in İstanbul.
Riyadh has also been vexed by a State Department decision to reverse a last-minute Trump administration ruling designating Yemen's Houthi rebels as a terrorist group, all while they continue to stage drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia.
In making the decision, the US said that placing the Houthis on its list of foreign terrorist groups and subjecting them to sanctions, would hamper the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Yemen, which has been plagued by civil war since 2014.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Saudi Crown Prince refused to receive several phone calls from the US president in the wake of a rise in oil prices due to the war in Ukraine.
Tuesday saw bin Salman urge the international community to take responsibility for conserving energy supplies and stand against the "Iranian Houthi militia".
Riyadh further stressed that it will not accept any responsibility for a shortage in global oil supplies.
According to the report in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, an Israeli delegation comprising senior Mossad and Israel Security Agency officials visited Cairo earlier this month, for talks on regional and global issues, direct travel between the countries and the war in Ukraine.
The daily further noted that the consultations also focused on coordinating Israeli-Egyptian mediation efforts between Saudi Arabia and the US to ease tensions between the parties.
Cairo joined the mediation effort at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's request, made during Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's recent visit to Riyadh.
Israel has vested interest in these efforts, as Jerusalem seeks to expand its outreach to the Saudis in hopes it would facilitate normalization with the Gulf power in the foreseeable future, the report said.
Meanwhile, the discord between the Saudis and the US has not prevented the latter from transferring a "significant number" of Patriot interception missiles to Saudi Arabia in line with an urgent request by Riyadh amid "sharp tensions in the relationship," The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
"The transfers sought to ensure that Saudi Arabia is adequately supplied with the defensive munitions it needs to fend off drone and missile attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen," the report stated, quoting a US official.
The interceptors were stored elsewhere in the Middle East, according to the report.
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A State Department spokesman told The Hill that the Biden administration has "been working with Saudi Arabia and its neighbors to help them strengthen their air defenses in response to a rising number of aerial attacks from Yemen."
One official told the WSJ that Patriot interceptors were moved from US stockpiles elsewhere in the Middle East.
"The US has supplied more than $100 billion worth of weapons to the kingdom in the past decade and has used the country to keep a US force presence in the region amid ongoing tensions with Iran and counterterrorism missions against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups," said The Hill.
JNS.org contributed to this report.
