Emboldened by its profitable wartime blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is popping to 1 of the hidden arteries in the international economic system: subsea cables beneath the waterway that carry huge web and monetary site visitors between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf.
The Islamic Republic desires to cost the world’s largest tech firms for utilizing the subsea web cables laid below the Strait of Hormuz, and state-linked media retailers have vaguely threatened that site visitors might be disrupted if companies don’t pay. Lawmakers in Tehran mentioned a plan final week which might goal submarine cables linking Arab international locations to Europe and Asia.
“We will impose fees on internet cables,” Iranian navy spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared on X final week. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards-linked media mentioned Tehran’s plan to extract income from the strait would require firms like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to adjust to Iranian regulation whereas submarine cable firms could be required to pay licensing charges for cable passage, with restore and upkeep rights given solely to Iranian companies.
Some of these firms have invested in the cables working via the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, but it surely’s unclear if these cables traverse Iranian waters.
It’s additionally unclear how the regime might power tech giants to conform, as they’re barred from making funds to Iran resulting from strict US sanctions; as a outcome, the firms themselves might view Iran’s statements as posturing moderately than severe coverage.
Still, state-affiliated media retailers have issued veiled threats warning of harm to cables that would affect some of the trillions of {dollars} in international knowledge transmission and have an effect on worldwide web connectivity.
www.submarinecablemap.com in May 14, 2026.” class=”image_large__dam-img image_large__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_large__dam-img–loading’)’ onerror=”imageLoadError(this)” height=”1237″ width=”1855″ loading=’lazy’/>NCS has reached out to the firms talked about in the Iranian report.
As fears develop that the war could resume following US President Donald Trump’s return from China, Iran is more and more signaling that it has highly effective instruments at its disposal past navy power. The transfer underscores the significance of the Strait of Hormuz past vitality exports, as Tehran seeks to show its geographic leverage into long-term financial and strategic power.
Subsea cables form the backbone of global connectivity, carrying the overwhelming majority of the world’s web and knowledge site visitors. Targeting them would have an effect on way over web speeds, threatening every little thing from banking methods, navy communications and AI cloud infrastructure to distant work, on-line gaming and streaming providers.
Iran’s threats are half of a technique to show its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and guarantee the survival of the regime, a core goal for the Islamic Republic on this conflict, mentioned Dina Esfandiary, Middle East lead at Bloomberg Economics.
“It aims to impose such a hefty cost on the global economy that no-one will dare attack Iran again,” she mentioned.
Several main intercontinental subsea cables cross via the Strait of Hormuz. Because of long-standing safety dangers with Iran, worldwide operators have intentionally averted Iranian waters, as an alternative clustering the majority of the cables in a slim band alongside the Omani aspect of the waterway, mentioned Mostafa Ahmed, a senior researcher at the United Arab Emirates-based Habtoor Research Center, who printed a paper on the results of a large-scale assault on submarine communications infrastructure in the Gulf.
www.submarinecablemap.com in May 14, 2026 displaying cables traversing the Strait of Hormuz.” class=”image_large__dam-img image_large__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_large__dam-img–loading’)’ onerror=”imageLoadError(this)” height=”1267″ width=”1900″ loading=’lazy’/>However, two of these cables, Falcon and Gulf Bridge International (GBI), run via Iranian territorial waters, mentioned Alan Mauldin, analysis director at TeleGeography, a telecom analysis agency.
Iran has not explicitly mentioned it should sabotage the cables, but it surely has repeatedly declared via officers, lawmakers and state-linked media of its intent to punish Washington’s allies in the area. It seems to be the newest uneven warfare approach devised by the regime to assault its neighbors.
Armed with fight divers, small submarines, and underwater drones, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) poses a danger to underwater cables, Ahmed mentioned, including that any assault might set off a cascading “digital catastrophe” throughout a number of continents.
Iran’s neighbors throughout the Persian Gulf might face extreme disruptions to web connection, probably impacting crucial oil and gasoline exports in addition to banking. Beyond the area, India might see a massive proportion of its web site visitors affected, threatening its big outsourcing trade with losses amounting to billions, in response to Ahmed.
The strait is a key digital hall between Asian knowledge hubs comparable to Singapore and a few cable touchdown stations in Europe, Ahmed mentioned. Any disruption might additionally sluggish monetary buying and selling and cross-border transactions between Europe and Asia, whereas components of East Africa might face web blackouts.
And if Iran’s proxies resolve to make use of related ways in the Red Sea, the harm might be far worse.
In 2024, three submarine cables have been severed when a vessel struck by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militants dragged its anchor throughout the seabed whereas sinking, disrupting almost 25% of web site visitors in the area, in response to Hong Kong-based HGC Global Communications.
Even although the affect of harm to the cables might be excessive in the Middle East and a few Asian international locations, TeleGeography mentioned “cables traversing the Strait of Hormuz account for less than 1% of global international bandwidth as of 2025.”
The first transatlantic telegram was despatched via an undersea cable in 1858, carrying a 98-word congratulatory message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to US President James Buchanan that took greater than 16 hours to reach. The significance of undersea cables has grown exponentially since.
Today, a single optical fiber in fashionable submarine cables can carry knowledge equal to roughly 150 million simultaneous cellphone calls at the pace of gentle, in response to the International Cable Protection Committee.
The apply of disrupting underwater communication cables dates again almost two centuries to the laying of the first telegraph cable in the English Channel in 1850. Among the opening acts of World War I, Britain severed Germany’s key telegraph cables, chopping off its communications with its forces.
Most fashionable cable harm ends in minimal disruption as a result of operators can shortly reroute site visitors throughout the international community of subsea networks. Yet, any large-scale harm at this time would have far larger penalties than in the telegraph age, given the world’s close to absolute dependence on knowledge flows via these cables.
The ongoing conflict in Iran might additionally severely complicate cable restore makes an attempt as upkeep vessels should stay stationary for prolonged durations whereas fixing faults, specialists say. Adding to the problem, of the 5 upkeep ships that usually function in the area, just one stays inside the Persian Gulf, in response to Mauldin.
Iranian information retailers have framed the proposal to cost for subsea cables passing via its waters as compliant with worldwide regulation, citing the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which incorporates provisions governing submarine cables.
While Iran has signed however not ratified the conference, it’s thought of by the authorized neighborhood as binding below customary worldwide regulation. Article 79 of UNCLOS says coastal states have the proper to determine circumstances for cables or pipelines getting into their territory or territorial sea.
Iranian media retailers have pointed to Egypt as a precedent. Cairo has leveraged the Suez Canal’s strategic location to host many subsea cables linking Europe and Asia, producing tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} yearly in transit and licensing charges.
The Suez Canal, nevertheless, is a man-made waterway excavated via Egyptian territory, whereas the Strait of Hormuz is a naturally occurring strait ruled by a totally different authorized framework, in response to a world regulation professional.
“Of course, for existing cables, Iran has to abide by the contract that had been made when the cable was laid,” Irini Papanicolopulu, a professor of worldwide regulation at SOAS University of London, informed NCS. “But for new ones, any state, including Iran, can decide if and under what conditions, cables can be laid in its territorial sea.”
Esfandiary, of Bloomberg Economics, mentioned Iran “theoretically knew” it had leverage over the strait however was unsure how vital the affect could be if it acted on these threats.
Now, she added, Tehran “has discovered the impact.”