Iran warned last week that undersea cables in the Strait of Hormuz were a vulnerable point for the region’s digital economy, raising concerns about possible attacks on critical infrastructure.
The narrow waterway, already a bottleneck for global oil shipments, is equally vital for the digital world. Several fiber optic cables snake across the seabed of the strait, connecting countries in India and Southeast Asia to Europe via the Gulf States and Egypt.
What makes submarine cables important?
Submarine cables are electrical or fiber optic cables laid on the seabed to transmit data and energy. They carry about 99% of the world’s Internet traffic, according to the ITU, the United Nations’ specialized agency for digital technologies.
They also transport telecommunications and electricity between countries and are essential for cloud services and online communications.
“Damaged cables mean Internet slowdowns or outages, interruptions in e-commerce, delays in financial transactions… and economic consequences of all these interruptions,” said geopolitical and energy analyst Masha Kotkin.
Gulf countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, have been investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure to diversify their economies away from oil. Both nations have established national AI companies serving clients across the region, all relying on undersea cables to move data at lightning speed.
Major cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz include Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1), which connects Southeast Asia to Europe via Egypt, with landing points in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia; the FALCON network, which connects India and Sri Lanka with the Gulf countries, Sudan and Egypt; and the International Gulf Bridge Cable System, which links all Gulf countries, including Iran.
Additional networks are being built, including a system run by Qatar’s Ooredoo.
In what area are the risks?
While the total length of undersea cables has increased considerably between 2014 and 2025, failures have remained stable at around 150 to 200 incidents per year, according to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).
State-sponsored sabotage remains a risk, but 70% to 80% of failures are caused by accidental human activities, mainly fishing and ship anchors, according to the ICPC and experts.
Other risks include underwater currents, earthquakes, underwater volcanoes and typhoons, said Alan Mauldin, research director at telecommunications research firm TeleGeography. The industry addresses these problems by burying cables, shielding them and selecting safe routes, he said.
The US-Israel war against Iran, approaching two months, has caused unprecedented disruption to global energy supplies and regional infrastructure, including attacks on Amazon Web Services data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. So far the submarine cables have been saved.
However, there is an indirect risk of damaged vessels inadvertently striking cables while dragging anchors.
“In a situation of active military operations, the risk of unintentional harm increases, and the longer this conflict goes on, the greater the likelihood of unintentional harm occurring,” Kotkin said. A similar incident occurred in 2024, when a commercial ship attacked by Iran-aligned Houthis was left adrift in the Red Sea and severed its anchor cables.
The extent to which damage to cables could affect connectivity in Gulf countries depends largely on how much individual network operators rely on them and what alternatives they have, according to TeleGeography.
There is no easy solution
Repairing damaged cables in conflict zones poses a separate challenge to securing them. While the physical repair itself is not overly complicated, the decisions of repair vessel owners and insurers can also be affected by the risk of damage from combat or the presence of mines, experts say.
Permits to access territorial waters add another layer of difficulty. “Often one of the biggest problems with doing repairs is that you have to get permits to access the waters where the damage is. Sometimes that can take a long time and can be the biggest source (of problems),” Mauldin said.
Once the conflict ends, industry players will also face the challenge of re-surveying the seabed to determine safe cable positions and avoid ships or objects that may have sunk during hostilities, he said.
What alternatives are there if submarine cables fail?
While potential damage to undersea cables would not cause a complete loss of connectivity (due to terrestrial links), experts agree that satellite systems are not a viable replacement as they cannot handle the same volume of traffic and are more expensive.
“It’s not like you can just switch to satellite. That’s not an alternative,” Mauldin said, noting that satellites rely on connections to terrestrial networks and are better suited for things on the move, like planes and ships.
Low-Earth orbit networks like Starlink are “a boutique solution, which at this time is not scalable for millions of users,” Kotkin added.
