Saudi Arabia wants to replace Israel with Syria as the transit country for a fibre-optic cable designed to connect the kingdom to Greece through the Mediterranean Sea, two regional officials familiar with the project told Middle East Eye.
Saudi Arabia’s insistence that it be connected to Greece through Syria, and not Israel, as previously discussed, underscores how regional alignments are shifting as Riyadh looks to bolster Damascus’s standing in the region and potentially isolate Israel.
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has publicly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, where over 72,000 Palestinians have been killed. Riyadh is also at odds with the UAE, Israel’s closest Arab partner, in Yemen, Sudan, and the Red Sea.
Athens is trying to position itself as a hub between Europe and the Middle East for energy, real estate and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
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Greece has courted Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia for investment, but it is particularly close to Israel, which policymakers in Athens view as an ally against Turkey, and an insurance policy to keep the US engaged in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Saudi Arabia’s shift on the project could throw a wrench in Greece’s relationship with Israel if it is indeed snubbed in the new route.
‘This is consistent with Saudi attempts to reintegrate Syria to the regional fold and play down any tangible links with Israel’
– Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Baker Institute
Fibre-optic cables carry essential digital services from country to country in milliseconds using pulses of light. Their importance is growing as Gulf states position themselves as exporters of AI, seeking to send data to Europe.
Greece and Saudi Arabia announced the East to Med data Corridor, or the EMC project, in 2022. It is a joint partnership between Saudi Telecom (STC), the Greek electricity provider PPC, Greek telecoms and the satellite applications company, TTSA.
At the time, Saudi Arabia was in talks with the US on a deal that would see them normalise relations with Israel. Those negotiations were derailed by the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks, which Israel retaliated against by launching an offensive on Gaza that the United Nations and human rights groups have deemed a genocide.
Israel also attacked Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
“There were a number of projects that planned to go through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel – this was one of them,” Julian Rawle, a US-based submarine fibre-optic cable consultant, told MEE.
“Saudi Arabia asking for transit through Syria is new. People are looking for additional terrestrial routes between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Syria is another option, if people feel comfortable with the evolving political situation there,” he added.
A presentation by Greece’s PPC dated November 2025, obtained by MEE, does not show Syria linked up to the EMC network. The corridor appears to move through Israel and its offshore waters.
‘Shift in attitude’
Saudi Arabia’s attempt to bring Syria into the project underscores how it is using its wealth to bolster regional allies at a time when it is challenging the UAE and Israel in the region. It also hints at Riyadh’s broader vision for the region.
“For Saudi Arabia, Damascus is at the heart of regional connectivity,” a western official familiar with Riyadh’s investment drive told MEE. “The Saudis want the roads, cables and trains to go through Syria”.
Saudi Arabia’s STC announced in February that it will invest about $800m in Syria’s telecommunications infrastructure.
The kingdom’s state news agency said the plan is to “connect Syria regionally and internationally through a fibre-optic network extending over more than 4,500 kilometres”.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said Saudi Arabia’s bid to include Syria at the expense of Israel reveals how much the region has reordered itself.
“A project like this is consistent with Saudi attempts to reintegrate Syria to the regional fold and play down any tangible links with Israel,” he added.
The year “2022 was the height of talk about normalisation between Saudi Arabia-Israel normalisation. This is indicative of the shift in Riyadh’s attitude,” he told MEE.
Europe’s ports of entry shifting east
Greece envisions itself serving as a hub for multiple cable routes, as the Gulf states boost their investments in AI data centres and link up to East Asian business capitals such as Singapore.
Originally, the port cities of Marseille and Genoa were the embarkation points for fibre-optic cables arriving in Europe. But the industry wants to diversify routes, and ports of entry to Europe have been shifting further east, putting Greece and Turkey on the map.
The Eastern Mediterranean is littered with the corpses of grand infrastructure projects dreamed up by regional leaders and by Washington-based think tanks.
A gas pipeline to connect Greece, Cyprus and Israel never materialised.
Likewise, the Great Sea Interconnector cable, envisioned to link Greece, Cyprus and Israel, has faced multiple delays.
Turkey, which lays claim to a wide swath of the Eastern Mediterranean disputed by Greece, has opposed the projects. A trade corridor under discussion also aims to link India to Greece, Israel and the UAE.
But Rawle told MEE that the East to Med data Corridor, or EMC West, is one of the more viable projects. He said that making a down payment to the system supplier is a key hurdle that the industry watches as a marker for progress.
Greek and Saudi banks signed an agreement to finance 60 percent of the project. In 2023, ECM signed a supply contract with Alcatel Submarine Networks to construct two subsea and terrestrial data cables.