CNN: Iran wants to impose fees for using cables under the Strait of Hormuz
In Tehran, they promised to charge fees from companies that own Internet cables running along the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz, the authors of the article on the CNN website write. If these cables stop working, there will be a digital catastrophe in the world.
Mostafa Salem, Sarah Tamimi
Inspired by the successful blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has turned its attention to one of the hidden arteries of the global economy: the underwater cables that carry network traffic and the flow of financial data between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf.
The Islamic Republic has set out to charge global technology giants for using underwater Internet cables under the Strait of Hormuz. The state-affiliated media vaguely threatened that their work could be disrupted if the companies did not pay. Last week, lawmakers in Tehran discussed a plan that could affect cables connecting Arab countries to Europe and Asia.
“We will introduce charges for Internet cables,” Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a representative of the joint command of the Iranian Armed Forces, said on his X social network page last week. Media outlets affiliated with the IRGC write that Tehran plans to “monetize” the strait and will require companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta* and Amazon to strictly comply with Iranian law. At the same time, companies will have to pay a license fee for the use of cables, and repair and maintenance rights will be provided exclusively to Iranian firms.
Some of these companies have invested in cables through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, but it is unclear whether they cross Iranian waters.
It is also unclear exactly how the regime will force the tech giants to comply, as strict US sanctions prohibit any payments to Iran. As a result, companies may consider Tehran's statements to be posturing rather than serious politics.
However, state-owned media are spreading veiled threats of cable damage, which is fraught with trillions of dollars in data transmission losses and communication disruptions around the world.
CNN has contacted the companies mentioned in the Iranian reports, but has not yet received a response.
Fears are growing that the war will resume upon the return of US President Donald Trump from China, and Iran is increasingly signaling that it has other powerful tools at its disposal besides the military itself. In particular, Tehran emphasizes the importance of the Strait of Hormuz not only for energy exports and seeks to turn its geographical location into a source of economic and strategic power.
Underwater cables are the backbone of global communications, and they carry the vast majority of the world's Internet traffic and data. Hitting them will not only slow down the internet, but will also jeopardize everything from banking systems, military communications, and artificial intelligence cloud infrastructure to remote work, online gaming, and streaming services.
Iran's threats fit into a long—standing strategy designed to demonstrate influence over the Strait of Hormuz and ensure the survival of the regime, the main goal of the Islamic Republic in this war, said Dina Esfandiari, a leading Middle East specialist at Bloomberg.
“The consequences for the global economy will be so severe that no one will dare to attack Iran anymore,” she said.
The “Cascading digital disaster”
Several large intercontinental submarine cables run through the Strait of Hormuz. As explained by Mostafa Ahmed, a senior researcher at the Habtur Research Center in the United Arab Emirates, author of a study on the consequences of a large-scale attack on underwater communications in the Persian Gulf, international operators are already deliberately avoiding Iranian waters, laying most cables along the Omani coast instead due to long-standing security threats from Tehran.
However, two cables, Falcon and Gulf Bridge International (GBI), pass through Iran's territorial waters, said Alan Moldin, director of research at the telecommunications research company TeleGeography.
Iran has not openly threatened sabotage, but has repeatedly made it clear through officials, lawmakers, and state media that it intends to punish Washington's allies in the region. It seems that this is the latest method of asymmetric warfare chosen by the regime to harm its neighbors.
With units of combat divers, small submarines and underwater drones, the IRGC poses a clear threat to the cables, Ahmed said. He stressed that any attack could trigger a “cascading digital catastrophe” on several continents at once.
Iran's neighbors in the Persian Gulf are facing serious Internet outages, which will affect oil and gas exports, as well as banking activities. Outside the region, Ahmed said, India's Internet traffic could be affected, threatening billions in losses to its numerous contractors.
According to Ahmed, the strait is a key digital corridor between Asian data centers such as Singapore and Europe. The slightest disruption will also slow down financial trade and cross-border transactions between Europe and Asia, while areas of East Africa will face internet outages.
If Iran's puppets in the region decide to use similar tactics in the Red Sea, the damage will be even greater.
According to Hong Kong-based HGC Global Communications, in 2024, three submarine cables broke when a vessel attacked by Yemeni Houthi militants dragged an anchor along the seabed. At the same time, almost 25% of Internet traffic in the region was affected.
Despite the potential massive damage in the Middle East and parts of Asia, TeleGeography emphasized that cables in the Strait of Hormuz account for less than 1% of global capacity as of 2025.
The “cable war" is not news
The first transatlantic telegram was sent by submarine cable in 1858. It was a 98-word congratulatory message from Queen Victoria of Great Britain to President James Buchanan of the United States, and it took more than 16 hours to send. Since then, the importance of submarine cables has grown exponentially.
Today, according to the International Cable Protection Committee, a single optical fiber in modern underwater cables can transmit at the speed of light an array of data comparable to 150 million simultaneous phone calls.
Sabotage on underwater cables began almost two centuries ago, after the first telegraph cable was laid in the English Channel in 1850. At the beginning of the First World War, Great Britain cut the key telegraph cables of Germany, disrupting communication between the troops.
Damage to most modern cables will only lead to minimal disruptions, as operators will quickly redirect data over the global network. However, a large-scale failure will have much more serious consequences than in the era of the telegraph, given the inextricable dependence of the world on data flowing through cables.
The ongoing war in Iran may seriously complicate the repair, as repair vessels need to stay in place for a long time to fix the problem, experts say. According to Moldin, of the five repair vessels normally operating in the Persian Gulf, only one remains today.
The Suez Canal as a model
Iranian news agencies stated that the proposal to charge for underwater cables passing through territorial waters does not contradict international law, and cited the example of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), whose provisions regulate cables, among other things.
Iran has signed but not ratified the convention, but lawyers still consider it binding under customary international law. Article 79 of UNCLOS states that coastal States have the right to establish conditions for laying cables or pipelines on their territory or territorial waters.
The Iranian media cites Egypt as a precedent. Cairo has taken advantage of the Suez Canal, through which many submarine cables run between Europe and Asia, and receives hundreds of millions of dollars annually in transit fees and royalties.
However, according to an expert on international law, the Suez Canal is an artificial waterway laid through Egypt, while the Strait of Hormuz is a natural artery that is regulated by other legal norms.
“Of course, with regard to the existing cables, Iran must comply with the contracts concluded when laying them,” Irini Papanikolopoulou, professor of international law at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, told CNN. ”As for the new ones, any state, including Iran, has the right to decide whether they can be laid in its territorial waters — and if so, on what terms."
Bloomberg economist Esfandiari said that Iran “guessed” that it had leverage over the situation in the strait, but was not sure how significant the effect would be.
Now, she concluded, Tehran has “fully realized its influence.”
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