Iran Draws Up Gulf Cable Attack Plans as Washington Weighs New War
Iran has prepared plans to strike undersea communications cables in the Gulf if the United States and Israel renew their assault, turning the region’s digital infrastructure into a threatened front in a war Washington has not ruled out restarting.
Two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters on October 23 that Tehran could attack cables and obstruct repair crews in order to prolong internet and communications disruption. One warned that a new attack on Iran would erase “red lines” from undersea cables to military bases. Yadollah Javani, deputy head of political affairs for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, separately said Iran could target seven major internet cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz.
The warning is not an abstract technological threat. Subsea cables carry about 99 percent of global internet traffic, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Banks, cloud services, hospitals, ports and government systems all depend on the dense network of fibre running along the seabed. A coordinated cut would not switch off the world, but it could slow regional networks, disrupt financial transactions and force traffic onto weaker routes.
The immediate global effect would probably remain limited. Telecommunications researcher Alan Mauldin told Reuters that less than 1 percent of international bandwidth passes through Hormuz. Operators could reroute some traffic through terrestrial links or other cables. But wartime insurance costs, security risks and permits to enter territorial waters could delay repairs, leaving Gulf states exposed for far longer than a peacetime outage.
That vulnerability gives the threat its political purpose. Gulf monarchies have spent billions trying to transform oil wealth into data centres, artificial-intelligence ventures and cloud infrastructure tied to US technology firms. Tehran is telling those governments that another American-Israeli attack will not stay inside Iran’s borders. It wants rulers in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Doha — and the corporations investing alongside them — to pressure Washington before a new bombing campaign begins.
Iranian officials have widened that message beyond communications cables. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned that oil infrastructure, data centres and artificial-intelligence facilities across as many as seven Gulf countries could become targets. Army commander Amir Hatami said Iran was fully prepared for asymmetric warfare. El País reported those public statements on October 23 as military tensions rose again.
The threats follow real attacks on the region’s digital infrastructure. During the war earlier this year, Amazon Web Services said two facilities in the United Arab Emirates were directly hit, while a strike near another site in Bahrain damaged infrastructure. Al Jazeera reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had named US-linked cloud and technology companies as potential targets. Those attacks showed how civilian systems built for profit can be pulled into a military confrontation.
None of this excuses attacks on infrastructure used by millions of civilians. Cutting internet cables would punish workers, migrants and families across the Gulf before it harmed the officials who authorize wars. It could interrupt wages, remittances, emergency services and access to information. The same principle applies to the bombing of Iranian power stations, ports and energy systems reportedly discussed by US and Israeli planners: civilian infrastructure is not a bargaining chip.
The escalation cannot be separated from the threat that produced it. El País reported that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu discussed a renewed bombing campaign against Iran earlier in October, including plans aimed at civilian and energy infrastructure. Trump has so far held back, but Iranian leaders plainly regard the pause as temporary. When powerful states treat bombing campaigns as options to be activated after elections, the targeted country prepares ways to spread the cost.
The cable threat therefore reveals the wider danger of Washington and Israel reopening the war. A new assault would not remain a controlled strike package on a Pentagon map. It could hit ports, refineries, data centres, desalination plants, shipping lanes and communications networks across the Gulf. The people who depend on those systems would absorb the first shock.
De-escalation requires more than asking Tehran to lower its voice. Washington and Israel must abandon plans for another attack, and Iran must reject retaliation against civilian networks. The alternative is a regional war in which every cable, server farm and power plant becomes a target — and millions of ordinary people become leverage.
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