TEHRAN (Realist English). Emboldened by its successful wartime blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is turning its attention to one of the hidden arteries of the global economy – the submarine telecommunications cables laid beneath the waterway that carry vast volumes of internet and financial traffic between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf.
The Islamic Republic intends to charge the world’s largest technology companies for using the submarine internet cables. State‑affiliated media have already issued vague warnings about possible traffic disruption if the firms refuse to pay. Last week (11‑15 May 2026), lawmakers in Tehran discussed a plan that could target cables linking Arab countries to Europe and Asia.
“We will impose fees on internet cables”
“We will impose fees on internet cables,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared on X last week. Media outlets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specified that Tehran’s plan would require companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon to comply with Iranian law. Submarine cable operators would have to pay licensing fees for cable passage, while repair and maintenance rights would be granted exclusively to Iranian firms.
Some of these companies have invested in cables running through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, but it is unclear whether these cables actually pass through Iranian territorial waters.
It also remains unclear how the regime could force the tech giants to comply, given that strict US sanctions prohibit them from making any payments to Iran. As a result, the companies themselves may view Iran’s statements as posturing rather than serious policy. Nevertheless, state‑affiliated media have issued veiled threats, warning that damage to the cables could affect trillions of dollars’ worth of global data transmission and impact internet connectivity worldwide.
Survival strategy
Amid growing fears that the war could resume after US President Donald Trump’s return from China, Iran is increasingly signalling that it possesses powerful tools beyond military force. This move underscores the importance of the Strait of Hormuz beyond energy exports – Tehran seeks to turn its geographic leverage into long‑term economic and strategic power.
Submarine cables form the backbone of global connectivity, carrying the vast majority of the world’s internet and data traffic. An attack on them would affect far more than internet speeds: banking systems, military communications, AI cloud infrastructure, remote work, online gaming and streaming services would all be threatened.
Dina Esfandiary, Middle East lead at Bloomberg Economics, said Iran’s threats are part of a strategy to demonstrate its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and ensure the survival of the regime – a key objective of the Islamic Republic in this war.
“It aims to impose such a hefty cost on the global economy that no one will dare attack Iran again,” she said.
“Cascading digital catastrophe”
Several major intercontinental submarine cables pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Because of long‑standing security risks, international operators have deliberately avoided Iranian waters, concentrating most of the cables in a narrow band along the Omani coast, said Mostafa Ahmed, a senior researcher at the UAE‑based Habtoor Research Centre, who published a paper on the effects of a large‑scale attack on submarine communications infrastructure in the Gulf.
However, two of these cables – Falcon and Gulf Bridge International (GBI) – do pass through Iranian territorial waters, according to Alan Mauldin, research director at telecommunications research firm TeleGeography.
Iran has not explicitly stated that it will sabotage the cables, but it has repeatedly, through officials, lawmakers and state‑affiliated media, expressed its intention to punish Washington’s allies in the region. This appears to be the latest asymmetric warfare technique devised by the regime to attack its neighbours.
Armed with combat divers, small submarines and underwater drones, the IRGC poses a real threat to submarine cables, Ahmed added. Any attack could trigger a cascading “digital catastrophe” across several continents.
Iran’s neighbours across the Persian Gulf could face serious internet disruptions, potentially affecting critical oil and gas exports as well as banking. Beyond the region, India could lose a significant portion of its internet traffic, threatening its huge outsourcing industry with losses in the billions of dollars, according to Ahmed.
The strait is a key digital corridor between Asian data hubs such as Singapore and some European cable landing stations. Any disruption could also slow financial trading and cross‑border transactions between Europe and Asia, while parts of East Africa could face internet blackouts. And if Iran’s proxy forces decided to employ similar tactics in the Red Sea, the damage could be far worse.
Precedent: Houthi attack in 2024
In 2024, three submarine cables were severed when a vessel attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels (allies of Iran) dragged its anchor across the seabed as it sank, disrupting nearly 25% of internet traffic in the region, according to Hong Kong‑based HGC Global Communications.
Although the impact of cable damage could be high in the Middle East and some Asian countries, TeleGeography notes that “cables traversing the Strait of Hormuz account for less than 1% of global international bandwidth as of 2025.”
Cable warfare is nothing new
The first transatlantic telegram was sent via submarine cable in 1858 – a 98‑word congratulatory message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to US President James Buchanan that took more than 16 hours to arrive. Since then, the importance of submarine cables has grown exponentially.
Today, a single optical fibre in a modern submarine cable can carry data equivalent to roughly 150 million simultaneous phone calls at the speed of light, according to the International Cable Protection Committee.
The practice of disrupting underwater communication cables dates back nearly two centuries, to the laying of the first telegraph cable in the English Channel in 1850. As one of the opening acts of World War I, Britain severed Germany’s key telegraph cables, cutting off its communications with its forces.
Most modern cable damage results in minimal disruption because operators can quickly reroute traffic across the global network of submarine cables. However, any large‑scale damage today would have far more serious consequences than in the telegraph age, given the world’s near‑absolute dependence on data flows through these cables.
The ongoing war around Iran could seriously complicate cable repair attempts, as repair vessels must remain stationary for long periods. Moreover, of the five repair ships normally operating in the region, only one remains inside the Persian Gulf, Mauldin noted.
Legal aspects: the Suez Canal precedent
Iranian news outlets have presented the proposal to charge for submarine cables passing through its waters as compliant with international law, citing the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which contains provisions governing submarine cables.
Although Iran has signed but not ratified the convention, the legal community considers it binding under customary international law. Article 79 of UNCLOS states that coastal states have the right to establish conditions for the laying of cables or pipelines entering their territory or territorial sea.
Iranian media point to Egypt as a precedent. Cairo has leveraged the strategic location of the Suez Canal to host many submarine cables linking Europe and Asia, generating hundreds of millions of dollars annually in transit and licensing fees.
However, the Suez Canal is an artificial waterway dug through Egyptian territory, whereas the Strait of Hormuz is a natural strait governed by a different legal framework, an international law expert explained.
“Of course, for existing cables, Iran must abide by the contract made when the cable was laid,” Irini Papanicolopulu, a professor of international law at SOAS University of London, told CNN. “But for new cables, any state, including Iran, can decide whether and under what conditions cables may be laid in its territorial sea.”
Dina Esfandiary of Bloomberg Economics said Iran “theoretically knew” it had leverage over the strait but was unsure how significant the impact would be if it acted on those threats. Now, she added, Tehran “has discovered the impact.”
Iran, having tasted a temporary victory at Hormuz, is trying to monetise it through new, unconventional means. Cutting off oil is painful; cutting off internet cables would be catastrophic for the global economy and security.
Tehran is playing on fear, but for now its threats remain more a probe than a real plan. The very fact that such an idea is being seriously discussed in parliament is a worrying signal: the war in the strait could shift from the physical to the digital realm, where the consequences would be even more unpredictable.