Iran eyes new source of power deep beneath Hormuz

Emboldened by its successful wartime blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is turning to one of the hidden arteries in the global economy: subsea cables beneath the waterway that carry vast internet and financial traffic between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf.
The Islamic Republic wants to charge the world’s largest tech companies for using the subsea internet cables laid under the Strait of Hormuz, and state-linked media outlets have vaguely threatened that traffic could be disrupted if firms don’t pay. Lawmakers in Tehran discussed a plan last week which could target submarine cables linking Arab countries to Europe and Asia.
“We will impose fees on internet cables,” Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared on X last week. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards-linked media said Tehran’s plan to extract revenue from the strait would require companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to comply with Iranian law while submarine cable companies would be required to pay licensing fees for cable passage, with repair and maintenance rights given exclusively to Iranian firms.
Some of these companies have invested in the cables running through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, but it’s unclear if those cables traverse Iranian waters.
It’s also unclear how the regime could force tech giants to comply, as they are barred from making payments to Iran due to strict US sanctions; as a result, the companies themselves may view Iran’s statements as posturing rather than serious policy.
Still, state-affiliated media outlets have issued veiled threats warning of damage to cables that could impact some of the trillions of dollars in global data transmission and affect worldwide internet connectivity.
Subsea cables form the backbone of global connectivity, carrying the vast majority of the world’s internet and data traffic. Targeting them would affect far more than internet speeds, threatening everything from banking systems, military communications and AI cloud infrastructure to remote work, online gaming and streaming services.
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 core objective for the Islamic Republic in this war, said 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 said.
Several major intercontinental subsea cables pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Because of long-standing security risks with Iran, international operators have deliberately avoided Iranian waters, instead clustering the majority of the cables in a narrow band along the Omani side of the waterway, said Mostafa Ahmed, a senior researcher at the United Arab Emirates-based Habtoor Research Center, who published a paper on the effects of a large-scale attack on submarine communications infrastructure in the Gulf.

However, two of those cables, Falcon and Gulf Bridge International (GBI), run through Iranian territorial waters, said Alan Mauldin, research director at TeleGeography, a telecom research firm.
Iran has not explicitly said it will sabotage the cables, but it has repeatedly declared through officials, lawmakers and state-linked media of its intent to punish Washington’s allies in the region. It appears to be the latest asymmetric warfare technique devised by the regime to attack its neighbors.
Armed with combat divers, small submarines, and underwater drones, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) poses a risk to underwater cables, Ahmed said, adding that any attack could trigger a cascading “digital catastrophe” across several continents.
Iran’s neighbors across the Persian Gulf could face severe disruptions to internet connection, potentially impacting critical oil and gas exports as well as banking. Beyond the region, India could see a large proportion of its internet traffic affected, threatening its huge outsourcing industry with losses amounting to billions, according to Ahmed.