Iranian threats to sever undersea internet cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz have raised concerns across the Gulf about the vulnerability of the region’s digital infrastructure and the potentially far-reaching consequences of disrupting some of the world’s most important telecommunications routes.
The threat comes at a time when internet connectivity has become essential to almost every aspect of modern life, from banking, transport and food delivery to government services, cloud computing and the data centre infrastructure underpinning the Gulf states’ economic development strategies.
Unlike conventional military targets, submarine telecommunications cables support interconnected systems used by millions of civilians and businesses across national borders. Any deliberate disruption could therefore affect countries beyond those directly involved in a military confrontation.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ibrahim bin Sultan Al Hashmi, warned during a weekly briefing that damage to submarine cables would not be confined to one party but would affect Iran itself and its neighbours.
Although satellite internet services such as Starlink have expanded rapidly, they cannot fully replace the capacity and operational importance of the extensive fibre-optic networks running along the seabed, as highlighted in reporting by the American technology publication Ars Technica.
The question is therefore not simply whether Iran could disrupt internet access across the Gulf, but how deeply such disruption could affect the wider region’s economic activity, communications infrastructure and everyday life.
Seven Critical Cables Through the Strait of Hormuz
Approximately seven major submarine telecommunications cables pass through the Strait of Hormuz before continuing into the Arabian Gulf towards Kuwait, Iraq and other regional states.
These cables form part of a wider system connecting the Middle East with major communications networks in Europe and Asia.
The figures cited in the reporting attribute approximately 97% of the region’s communications connectivity to submarine cable infrastructure, while estimating that routes in the wider area carry around 30% of internet traffic linking Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Their importance lies in the enormous volumes of data they transmit and the fact that several regional economies depend on international connectivity to operate financial institutions, government platforms, telecommunications networks and commercial services.
However, the potential threat extends beyond cables passing directly through Hormuz.
Other critical submarine networks run between the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Bab Al Mandab Strait, creating a broader communications corridor connecting the region with international data networks.
A previous report by the Saudi news website House of Saud discussed the vulnerability of these routes in the context of Iranian threats and regional military tensions.
Including cables passing through the Red Sea and Bab Al Mandab, the regional network comprises approximately 17 submarine cables.
Some of these are located beyond Iran’s immediate geographical reach. Any attempt to target them would therefore potentially require the involvement of the Houthi movement in Yemen or other regional actors.
Such a development could extend the consequences of the present confrontation into additional maritime corridors.
The source material estimates that the wider cable network carries approximately 80% of global internet traffic. While the precise figure requires independent verification, the regional corridors are important components of international connectivity, and simultaneous damage to multiple routes could produce disruption extending well beyond the Gulf.
Some individual cables are described as possessing transmission capacities reaching 100 terabytes per second, illustrating the substantial volume of information that could be affected by damage to major telecommunications links.
Because these cables connect multiple countries and their associated data centres, disruption at one location can affect services far from the physical point of damage.
Previous Cable Failures Demonstrate the Wider Risk
The vulnerability of submarine communications infrastructure is not merely theoretical.
Previous damage to major telecommunications cables in the Red Sea disrupted connectivity across several countries and demonstrated how failures in geographically concentrated infrastructure can produce consequences across multiple regions.
Among the affected systems were the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 cable, commonly known as SEA-ME-WE 4 or SMW4, the India-Middle East-Western Europe system (IMEWE), and the FALCON cable.
Disruptions involving these networks affected internet services in parts of the Middle East and Europe, while also interfering with connectivity in India.
These incidents demonstrated the dependence of international telecommunications on a comparatively limited number of high-capacity routes.
They also exposed a central weakness in global digital infrastructure: although the internet is designed to redirect traffic when connections fail, alternative routes do not necessarily possess sufficient spare capacity to absorb the sudden loss of several major cables simultaneously.
As a result, the disruption of one connection may be manageable, while damage to multiple cables within the same corridor can create a much more serious problem.
What Happens if Iran Cuts the Cables?
If submarine cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz were severed, one of the most immediate consequences could be a substantial deterioration in internet connectivity across Gulf countries.
The extent of disruption would depend on the number of cables affected, the availability of alternative routes and the ability of telecommunications operators to redirect traffic.
Gulf states are not entirely dependent on cables passing through Hormuz.
Several alternative systems connect the region to international networks without following the same maritime route.
Some cables enter through the Indian Ocean and cross land in Oman before connecting onwards to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain.
These alternative connections provide a degree of resilience, but the submarine routes passing through Hormuz carry substantial volumes of data.
If several were damaged simultaneously, the remaining networks could face significant additional demand.
Telecommunications operators would then need to redistribute data traffic through functioning routes.
Under conditions of severe capacity shortages, the available bandwidth would be particularly important for essential government operations, emergency communications and critical infrastructure.
Ordinary users could experience slower connection speeds, intermittent outages and reduced access to services that depend on international communications.
For businesses, the consequences could extend beyond inconvenience.
Companies dependent on cloud-hosted systems, international payment processing, real-time logistics and continuous access to remote servers could face operational difficulties if connectivity deteriorated for an extended period.
Crucially, however, damage to cables in the Strait of Hormuz would not necessarily disconnect the entire Gulf from the internet.
The global network contains alternative routes, and its traffic-management systems are designed to redirect data when connections become unavailable.
The central risk is therefore a combination of reduced capacity, congestion and disruption to particular services rather than an inevitable and complete regional internet blackout.
Data Centres and the Gulf’s Digital Economy
The potential consequences become more serious when considering the Gulf’s expanding role as a regional centre for cloud computing and digital services.
Major technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and Huawei, have established data centre operations across the region.
These facilities support a wide range of services used by businesses, institutions and individual consumers.
Data centres do not operate independently of international telecommunications networks.
Although some applications and services can continue functioning locally, many depend on connections to systems, databases or users located in other countries.
Damage to submarine cables could restrict this international connectivity, affecting applications and businesses that rely on the affected infrastructure.
This creates a particular challenge for Gulf economies that have invested heavily in developing technology sectors and attracting international cloud service providers.
The same infrastructure that supports their digital growth strategies also creates a dependence on reliable, high-capacity communications networks.
A major disruption would therefore have implications not only for internet users but also for the wider economic ambitions built around the region’s growing technology sector.
Which Applications and Services Could Be Affected?
The effects of widespread submarine cable disruption could become visible through the applications people use every day.
Transport platforms such as Careem and DiDi, which the source identifies as relying on regional data centre infrastructure, could experience interruptions if the systems supporting their operations became inaccessible.
This could affect ride bookings, location-based services, journey management and other functions requiring continuous communication between mobile applications and their supporting servers.
Video platforms could also experience difficulties.
TikTok and YouTube use regional infrastructure to improve content delivery speeds, including facilities in Dubai and elsewhere in the Gulf, according to the technology education website Think Cloudly.
Disruption to regional connectivity could affect video loading times, streaming quality and access to content, particularly when alternative networks become congested.
Food delivery platforms such as Talabat could face similar problems if their supporting cloud services or communications infrastructure were affected.
For consumers, the impact could appear in relatively ordinary situations: an application failing to load, an order remaining unprocessed or a service becoming temporarily unavailable.
Social media platforms could also experience slower performance or interruptions where they depend on affected regional infrastructure.
However, such consequences would not necessarily mean that every application would stop functioning completely.
The severity of disruption would depend on the location of supporting systems, the availability of backup infrastructure and the ability of service providers to maintain operations through alternative connections.
Some services could remain accessible, while others might become considerably slower or temporarily unavailable.
Why Iran Would Also Be Affected
One of the most consequential aspects of the threat is that disruption to submarine internet cables would not be limited to Iran’s regional adversaries.
The digital infrastructure of the Arabian Gulf supports interconnected communications systems serving numerous countries, including Iran itself.
Interruptions affecting major regional data routes could therefore have consequences for Iranian businesses, institutions and internet users.
This is the concern raised by Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ibrahim bin Sultan Al Hashmi, who emphasised that the damage would extend to Iran and neighbouring countries rather than being confined to a single state.
The nature of submarine telecommunications networks makes it difficult to isolate the consequences of physical damage within political or military boundaries.
Unlike a conventional military strike aimed at a particular installation, severing a shared communications route can interfere with services used by countries that were not the intended targets.
Consequently, the potential economic and civilian consequences could extend across the region regardless of the political positions of individual governments.
Could Starlink Keep the Gulf Connected?
The expansion of satellite-based internet services has created an alternative means of accessing global communications networks.
Starlink and similar systems could offer some users an additional connection if terrestrial and submarine infrastructure were disrupted.
Satellite connectivity could therefore provide an important alternative in certain circumstances, particularly where conventional internet services became severely degraded.
However, such services cannot simply replace the capacity of submarine fibre-optic cables across an entire region.
Submarine networks transmit enormous volumes of data between countries and continents and remain central to the functioning of international telecommunications.
Satellite networks operate under different technical and capacity constraints.
Even where satellite access remained available, users could still encounter problems accessing regional applications whose supporting servers or data centres were affected by the disruption.
For example, maintaining a connection to the global internet would not automatically restore a local service if the infrastructure operating that service were inaccessible.
Satellite connectivity might therefore reduce the impact for some users without eliminating the wider consequences of major submarine cable failures.
A Threat Extending Beyond the Battlefield
Iran’s threats against submarine telecommunications cables introduce a different dimension to the consequences of regional military confrontation.
The Strait of Hormuz is already strategically important because of its role in international maritime trade and energy transportation.
Its significance as a communications corridor adds another layer of vulnerability.
A disruption to the undersea networks crossing the strait could interfere with commercial activity, digital services and international connectivity across several countries simultaneously.
The consequences could also extend into Europe and Asia, where telecommunications networks depend partly on routes passing through the broader Middle Eastern region.
Nevertheless, the precise scale of any disruption cannot be determined solely from the existence of Iranian threats.
It would depend on which cables were damaged, how many routes remained operational and how quickly network operators could restore or redistribute affected traffic.
What makes the threat particularly serious is the extent to which civilian life now depends on the uninterrupted functioning of digital infrastructure.
For residents of neighbouring countries, widespread internet disruption could interfere with daily activities more directly than military operations taking place far from populated areas.
The potential consequences would reach into homes, workplaces, businesses and public institutions, affecting activities that increasingly depend on constant digital access.
Even without a complete internet shutdown, the loss of several major submarine cables could expose the region’s dependence on infrastructure that remains largely invisible to the people who rely on it.
