Most people think of the Strait of Hormuz as an oil chokepoint.Iranis now reminding the world it is something else too: a digital one.
Fresh from its wartime blockade of the strait, Tehran is turning its attention to the subsea cables sitting on the seabed beneath the waterway. These are not just internet cables. They carry the financial transactions, military communications, AI traffic and everyday data flows that connect Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf. And Iran wants a cut.
Lawmakers in Tehran discussed the plan last week. How enforceable any of it is remains genuinely unclear. US sanctions currently bar these companies from making payments to Iran, which means the tech giants may read Iran's statements as posturing rather than concrete policy. But the veiled threats from state-affiliated media about potential cable damage are harder to dismiss entirely.
Operators have largely tried to avoid Iranian waters for security reasons, routing most cables through a narrow band along the Omani side of the strait. Two cables though, Falcon and Gulf Bridge International, do run through Iranian territorial waters, according to TeleGeography research director Alan Mauldin, who was cited in a CNN News report.
Persian Gulf states could face severe internet disruptions that hit oil, gas and banking operations. The strait is a key corridor between Asian data hubs like Singapore and cable landing stations in Europe, so disruption there would slow financial trading and cross-border transactions across both continents. Parts of East Africa could face outright internet blackouts.
Worth keeping in mind though: TeleGeography puts the global scale of any disruption in context. Cables running through the Strait of Hormuz account for less than 1% of total global international bandwidth as of 2025. The regional impact would be severe, the global impact more contained.
Sagar is a journalist with an interest primarily in geopolitics and American domestic politics. Before joining Times Now, he wrote for Republic and Sw...View More
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