By Shola Adebowale
Iran’s threat to cut undersea cables is a serious concern, as these cables carry around 95-99% of global internet traffic, including critical financial transactions. The Strait of Hormuz, where many of these cables are located, is a key chokepoint, handling around 30% of the world’s internet traffic.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, regarded globally as Iran’s proxy, have warned about cutting fibre-optic cables in the Red Sea. The Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea are critical chokepoints for global digital traffic, with around 17 submarine cables passing through the Red Sea. Any disruption could significantly impact global internet connectivity, affecting countries like India, which relies heavily on these cables for internet traffic.
The threats are likely part of a broader strategy to disrupt global energy markets and exert pressure on the US and its allies. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned that critical undersea cable infrastructure in Hormuz will not be spared from attack, heightening concerns about deliberate or collateral damage to these vital networks.
To fully grasp the magnitude of Iran’s threats, one must first appreciate the extraordinary engineering feat that undersea cables represent and the degree to which modern civilisation has staked its prosperity upon them. Unlike the satellites that many people intuitively associate with global communications, it is the invisible web of fibre-optic cables resting silently on the ocean floor that truly holds the world together. These cables are no thicker than a garden hose in many stretches, yet they carry the financial heartbeat of nations, the intelligence of governments, the commerce of corporations, and the daily conversations of billions of individuals.
The sheer concentration of this infrastructure in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea corridor makes these waterways among the most strategically sensitive geographic spaces on the planet. The Red Sea alone hosts approximately 17 submarine cables, while around 18% of all global data traffic passes through it daily. For context, this means that a successful and sustained attack on cables in this region would not merely slow internet speeds in a handful of countries. It would amputate entire economies from the digital arteries that sustain them. Stock exchanges would falter. Payment systems would freeze. Supply chains that depend on real-time data coordination would collapse into uncertainty. Cloud-based services, from hospital records management to government communications, would grind to a halt.
Countries in South Asia, East Africa, and parts of Europe are disproportionately exposed to such an event. India, for instance, routes a substantial portion of its international internet traffic through the Red Sea corridor. A deliberate severing of cables in this zone would not be an inconvenience for Indian businesses and institutions. It would represent an economic emergency of the first order, disrupting financial markets, paralyzing IT-dependent industries, and isolating millions of users from the global digital economy.
Bearing this structural vulnerability in mind, Iran’s current posture takes on a distinctly calculated and escalatory character. Iran has indeed implemented internet shutdowns and restrictions within its own borders, and there is a fear that similar tactics could be extended to disrupt global internet connectivity. The country’s actions have raised concerns about the potential for state-sponsored disruptions to critical infrastructure, including undersea cables. The difference, however, is that cutting undersea cables would have far-reaching and devastating consequences for global economies and societies, affecting millions of people worldwide. It is a risk that could escalate tensions and have unintended consequences.
What distinguishes Iran’s current posture from prior geopolitical brinkmanship is the deliberate escalatory logic embedded within it. Tehran’s domestic experience with internet control, having deployed some of the world’s most sophisticated national internet shutdown mechanisms during periods of civil unrest, gives it both the technical literacy and the political willingness to treat digital infrastructure as a weapon. The Islamic Republic has demonstrated, repeatedly and without apology, that it views connectivity as a privilege to be extended or withdrawn in the service of state objectives.
Projecting this logic onto the international stage represents a qualitative leap. Where domestic shutdowns primarily punish Iranian citizens, severing international undersea cables would constitute an act of economic warfare against dozens of sovereign nations simultaneously. The IRGC’s explicit warning that undersea cable infrastructure in the Strait of Hormuz would “not be spared” signals a deliberate decision to move this threat from the realm of theoretical risk into active strategic messaging. Whether the intent is to follow through or to extract diplomatic concessions through intimidation, the warning itself reshapes the global security calculus around these assets.
Analysts have noted that these threats do not exist in isolation. They form part of a coordinated strategy, encompassing Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, harassment of tankers in the Persian Gulf, and proxy operations across the Middle East, designed to raise the cost of Western geopolitical engagement in the region. The cable threat, in this reading, is not a standalone gambit but a pressure multiplier: a reminder that Iran possesses asymmetric tools capable of inflicting systemic pain far beyond any conventional military confrontation.
Framing the legal dimensions of this threat reveals an equally troubling picture. Apparently, Iran would be declaring war against the world if it went ahead to carry out its threat. This is because the 1884 Paris Convention made it a punishable offense to damage submarine cables, while the 1958 Geneva Conventions reinforced the right to lay them. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) clarified how states can regulate cables without obstructing global connectivity.
These legal frameworks, while significant in establishing international norms, expose a troubling gap between codified principle and enforceable reality. The 1884 Paris Convention was conceived in an era when submarine cable damage was most commonly accidental, caused by ship anchors, trawling nets, or seismic activity. The notion of a state-sponsored, deliberate campaign against global cable infrastructure was barely imaginable. Today, however, the scenario is not only imaginable but actively threatened.
UNCLOS provides some regulatory scaffolding, granting coastal states certain jurisdictional rights over cables passing through their exclusive economic zones while requiring that such rights not obstruct legitimate global connectivity. Yet enforcement mechanisms remain weak. The international community has no standing rapid-response military force dedicated to protecting undersea infrastructure, no automatic sanctions trigger for states that threaten such assets, and no clear consensus on what threshold of cable disruption would constitute an act of war warranting a collective military response.
This legal ambiguity is precisely the space Iran seeks to exploit. By operating through proxies like the Houthis, Tehran can pursue plausible deniability even as it directs or enables attacks on global infrastructure. The world’s legal architecture was designed for a different era, and updating it to address the realities of 21st-century hybrid warfare against digital infrastructure has become an urgent priority for the international community.
Understanding which specific cables stand in the crosshairs sharpens the stakes considerably. The undersea cables in question are crucial for global internet connectivity, carrying around 95-99% of international internet traffic. These cables are fiber-optic and are laid on the ocean floor, connecting continents, markets, and households. Key cables and routes include the 2Africa Pearls, which connects countries around the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, and India to the broader network, the India Europe Xpress (IEX), linking India to Europe, and Raman, connecting West Asia, Europe, and Asia.
These cables are vital for global communication, commerce, and finance, supporting services like cloud computing, video calls, and online banking. The Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea are critical chokepoints, with around 18% of global data traffic passing through the Red Sea. Disruptions to these cables could have significant economic and social impacts, affecting millions of people.
Each of these cable systems represents billions of dollars in investment and years of engineering work. The 2Africa Pearls system alone, when completed, will be among the longest submarine cable systems ever built, encircling the African continent and extending into the Gulf and South Asia. The IEX cable provides a dedicated high-capacity link between India and Europe, supporting the enormous volume of IT services traffic that flows between Indian tech hubs and European markets. Raman serves as a critical bridge for West Asian nations seeking integration with both European and broader Asian digital ecosystems. The loss of even one of these systems for an extended period would force massive traffic rerouting, create severe bandwidth congestion on alternative routes, and impose substantial financial costs on businesses, governments, and consumers alike.
Equally important to understanding what is at risk is knowing who built these systems and who bears responsibility for their protection. Cables are laid by specialized ships and require permits to be placed in a country’s waters. Repairing damaged cables can take weeks to months, depending on the location and severity of the damage. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is working to enhance submarine cable resilience through cooperation and standard-setting.
The undersea cables in question were built by several major companies, including Prysmian Group, the world’s largest cable manufacturer, headquartered in Italy, with over 33,000 employees globally. NEC Corporation, a Japanese tech leader with over 125 years of innovation, has delivered subsea telecom cable systems for more than 60 years. Nokia (Alcatel Submarine Networks), a Finnish telecommunications giant, provides end-to-end submarine cable systems. Sumitomo Electric Industries, a Japanese engineering leader, has over a century of experience in subsea cable infrastructure. Google has invested heavily in private subsea networks, including the MAREA and Dunant cables. Meta co-owns systems like 2Africa and has contingency plans for disruptions, while Amazon has invested in transoceanic infrastructure for AWS. These companies are part of a broader ecosystem ensuring global connectivity.
The involvement of technology giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon in undersea cable infrastructure introduces a dimension that would have been unimaginable a generation ago: private corporations are now co-owners and co-guardians of assets that are, in every meaningful sense, critical global public infrastructure. This blurring of the line between commercial investment and strategic national interest complicates both the governance and the defence of these systems. When a cable co-owned by Meta is threatened by a state actor, the question of who bears primary responsibility for its protection, whether the corporation, the flag state of the cable ship, the coastal states along the route, or a multilateral body, remains dangerously unresolved. The repair timeline compounds the vulnerability further. Cable repair vessels are few in number globally, their deployment requires diplomatic clearances from coastal states, and the physical process of locating a break in thousands of metres of ocean water, raising the cable, splicing it, and relaying it is extraordinarily time-consuming. Weeks or months of disruption following a deliberate attack is not an alarmist projection. It is a logistical reality grounded in the engineering constraints of the repair process itself.
Efforts to close these gaps are underway, though they must be assessed with clear eyes against the true scale of the threat. Efforts to protect undersea cables in the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea corridors are underway, with governments and tech giants taking steps to prevent disruptions. The ITU has established an advisory body to enhance submarine cable resilience, and companies like Meta and Google have activated contingency rerouting plans in response to Iran’s threats.
Some initiatives include the International Maritime Security Construct, a US-led effort to ensure freedom of navigation and security in key waterways, and the European-led Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz (EMASoH), a mission to monitor and observe maritime security in the region. Additionally, the Red Sea Projec. EMASoH and the International Maritime Security Construct provide naval presence and surveillance capability, yet the sheer geographic exp t, a UN-led initiative, focuses on maritime security and stability in the Red Sea area. Countries like India are also investing in alternative routes, such as satellite internet services, to reduce dependence on undersea cables.
These initiatives represent meaningful progress, but the ITU’s advisory body is a standard-setting and coordination mechanism, valuable for long-term r
esilience planning but not equipped to deter an imminent physical attackanse of the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea makes comprehensive cable protection extraordinarily difficult. Cables run for thousands of kilometres through waters that cannot be continuously patrolled at every point. Satellite internet services, championed by providers such as SpaceX’s Starlink, offer a meaningful supplementary layer of connectivity resilience. However, current satellite infrastructure cannot come close to replicating the bandwidth capacity of undersea fibre-optic cables for high-volume commercial and financial data transmission. Satellite connectivity serves as a critical backup for individual users and remote communities, but it is not a substitute for the terabit-per-second capacity that global commerce demands.
Taken together, the convergence of legal inadequacy, physical vulnerability, and Iranian strategic intent demands a response that is proportionate in both its urgency and its comprehensiveness. The international community must move beyond reactive posturing and commit to a coordinated doctrine for the protection of undersea cable infrastructure as critical global commons. Concretely, this means deploying intelligence-led operations to identify, monitor, and proactively disrupt any planning directed at undersea cable assets. Governments with the capacity to conduct targeted operations against networks, whether state actors or proxy groups, that are actively planning infrastructure attacks must be prepared to act on that intelligence decisively, including through targeted raids, arrests, and other operations designed to dismantle such plans before they can be executed. Financial pressure must be applied simultaneously, freezing assets, disrupting funding channels, and denying financing to any elements linked to plans targeting global digital infrastructure. Diplomatic coalitions must be built not merely to condemn such threats in principle, but to establish credible, pre-agreed consequences that are automatically triggered by verified attacks on undersea cables. The ambiguity that currently characterises the international response to hybrid infrastructure warfare must be replaced with clarity. Any state or non-state actor that severs a cable carrying the world’s digital traffic must understand, in advance, the full weight of the response it will face. Protecting the undersea cables that carry humanity’s digital lifeblood is not merely a matter of technical resilience. It is a fundamental test of whether the international order retains the will and the capacity to defend the foundations of the modern world.
