Iran's Cable Threat Puts Gulf AI and Cloud Links at Risk

Two senior Iranian security officials said Oct. 24 that Iran has prepared plans to strike undersea communications cables in the Gulf if the United States and Israel attack again. The plans add a communications risk for regional cloud, artificial-intelligence and financial networks.

One official said Iran would also prevent repairs, potentially extending an outage. Officials with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have separately threatened seven major internet cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz if Iranian infrastructure is hit.

Damage to multiple routes could disrupt financial transactions, e-commerce and cloud computing across the region. The scale would depend on traffic rerouting and spare capacity on alternative cables. Less than 1% of global international bandwidth passes through the Strait, limiting the potential for a broad global internet disruption.

The threat comes as Gulf states build digital capacity. Microsoft plans to invest more than $10 billion through 2030 across the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, and more than $400 million to improve Middle East subsea and land connections.