By Noubar Serabian

On October 01, 2026 I published an article titled “Pashinyan, The Mossad, And IDF’s Unit 8200.”

Lately a new scandal surfaced on the international scene, centering on a ban connected to a mapping app/navigational app known as Waze, connecting the founders of Waze to IDF’s Unit 8200, and the massive information gleaning used by the Israeli intelligence community to further clandestine operations in Iran, Iraq,…

This week’s scandal originated in Malaysia, where Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim banned all civil servants from using Waze because its origins, closely tied to Israel, raised security “Concerns.”

The Malaysian Prime Minister highlighted to the media two critical factors that shaped the decision to ban Waze;

a) “Potential Security Risks” to civil servants.

b) The fact that Waze “was bound to Israeli laws.”

Malaysia is not the first country to ban the mapping app Waze. During the last two years, several coutries, on multiple continents stretching from China to Iran to Europe, have imposed a partial or total ban on the use of Waze by their citizens. But first, let us divert our attention to the origins of Waze and the three partners credited with turning the app from a modest business venture to approximately a $1 billion dollar corporate mammoth.

Waze was originally created in 2008, and incorporated in Israel under the legal and operational name ofFreeMap. It was the end result of a close partnership involving 

Uri Levine, Ehud Shabtai, and Amir Shinar.

In June 2013 Google made a corporate takeover of Waze for roughly $1.1 billlion. Waze remained headquartered in Israel, and continues to operate through its Israeli entity.

Waze’s terms of service and legal disputes are governed by the laws of Israel, with jurisdiction tied to courts in Tel Aviv.

Uri Levine, one of the co-founders of Waze was born in Israel in 1965. He met his two partners Ehud Shabtai and Amir Shinar while a conscript assigned to IDF’s Unit 8200. As highlighted in previous articles, Israeli citizens do not sever ties with Unit 8200 the day their compulsory military service ends. Most graduates of Unit 8200 move into the corporate world but maintain a close relationship with their former colleagues and The Mossad, and the information exchange never ceases, especially if Israel’s national security is at stake.

First to prohibit the use of Waze by its citizens was China. Since 2010, with the establishment of the “Great Firewall of China” any app associated with Google is blocked and inaccessible to Chinese citizens. Chinese citizens residing in mainland China, in any attempt to use Waze encounter blank maps or endless loading screens due to the absence of connection to Google’s servers.

Today, under Chinese laws the distribution of geographic data by foreign entities is illegal. Only Chinese corporations with special authorization are allowed to providemapping/navigational apps within the country. The Chinese government offers three options to its citizens-Amap is the most popular app with700 million monthly active users, followed by Baidu Maps, and Tencent Maps.

Iran’s struggles to prohibit the use of Waze started in March 2017, when Iranian authorities pointed out that the app’s roots are connected to the “Zionist Enemy” and has the ability to provide valuable information on the movements of Iranian citizens.

While many sources in Iran indicated that the app was working, with temporary disruptions up until January 2018, the Ayatollahs declared in 2019 Waze as an Israeli-founded app with far reaching capacities as a spying tool, directly implicated in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist based on the following scenario:

– Waze downloaded on the smart phone of a nuclear scientist (X) will establish the daily movement patterns from the moment he leaves home, to the exact minute he reaches work, with the exact streets and highways used between home and work.

– Waze will share the information with The Mossad. The Intelligence agency will be dispatched to the specific city where scientist (X) lives, and a remote-controlled machine gun nest disguised as a pile of garbage will be mounted and ready to target (X).

– On the fateful day, a message will appear of X’s screen warning him about a heavy traffic ahead, and directing him to the street where the machine gun nest had been set up.

– A Mossad agent or an Iranian asset will remotely execute the scientist once his car is within the lethal firing range and will send him into a premature trip to eternity. Wine glasses will be raised in Tel Aviv to celebrate another milestone in disrupting Iran’s nuclear program and imposing a setback that will delay the creation of the Iranian A Bomb by several years. Reality is stranger than FICTION, isn’t it???

Last but not least, in the saga of events where reality is starnger than FICTION we go to Iraq. Iraqi officials issued orders to ban Waze by the end of 2026 for reasons closely associated with the national security of Iraq, especially after the discovery of a “Secret” military outpost near the town of Al-Nukhaib/Al-Nukhib in Western Iraq.

The site was exposed on March 3, 2026, when a Bedouin shepherd named Awad al-Shammari observed suspicious helicopter activity and noticed that the soldiers the outpostspoke Arabic in a dialect that does not belong to the region. Several Iraqis lost their lives by the time the Israeli base was hastily dismantled, and Israeli soldiers moved back to their point of departure in Israel. 

Again, Waze was monitoring trucks and vehicles in the neighborhood of the “Secret” Israeli military outpost, and diverting traffic to alternative routes to minimize the chances of undermining the mission. Readers interested an in-depth exploration of the Bedouin and the Israeli operation in Iraq can use the following sources:

– “Al Arabiya reveals how Iraqi shepherd exposed secret Israeli baseduring Iran war”

– “Report: Iraqi shepherd uncovers alleged secret Israeli base in desert”

For close links between the “Corporate World” and IDF’s Unit 8200 read the following old but very informative articles:

– “From The Israeli Army Unit 8200 To Silicon Valley”

– Israeli military intelligence unit drives country’s hi-tech boom

Remember, every time you download a “Free” app on your smart phone you are undermining your safety, your privacy, and allowing an entity operating thousands of kilometers away to control your destiny. Minimize your electronic footprint and crumbs if the app is not very critical for your day-to-day activities. Try to discriminate the “Convenient” from the “Compromising” that may endanger your life one day.