Iran has prepared detailed plans to strike undersea communications cables beneath the Gulf if the United States and Israel launch new attacks on the country, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity and offered few specifics. Neither said how or where Tehran would carry out such attacks. One said Iran would work to stop repairs after any strike in order to drag out the disruption to communications, including internet connections.
"If Iran is attacked, there will be no more red lines ... from undersea cables to military bases, including covert ones," one of the officials said.
The same official cautioned Washington not to "play with fire." He claimed Iran had full access to the cables and could destroy them easily.
The second official turned to the Gulf states, which have poured money into digital infrastructure. They "should hold Washington, not Tehran, responsible for any damage to undersea cables," he said.
The officials' remarks follow an on-the-record threat earlier this week. On Wednesday, Yadollah Javani, deputy head of political affairs for the IRGC, said Iran could target seven major internet cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz if its infrastructure came under attack.
The International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency, estimates that undersea cables carry around 99% of global internet traffic.
The global fallout from an Iranian strike may be limited, however, according to Alan Mauldin, research director at the telecommunications research firm TeleGeography. He put the share of international bandwidth running through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway between Iran and Oman, at under 1%. The effect of any cuts would depend on how operators rerouted traffic and how much capacity alternative connections could offer, Mauldin said.
The Red Sea could prove a more significant target, especially if Iran enlisted its Houthi allies in Yemen, though Tehran has not publicly threatened cables there. Mauldin said capacity routed through the Red Sea accounts for about 3% of global international demand and roughly 10% of traffic moving between regions.
Alex Vatanka, who heads the Iran program at Washington's Middle East Institute, described the threats as an effort to deter a new round of fighting by making Gulf governments and US companies fear for their investments. "Tehran wants Gulf states and corporate executives to press [US President Donald] Trump over the risks his policies pose to their investment plans," Vatanka said.
Neither the US State Department nor Iran's Foreign Ministry answered requests for comment on the officials' remarks. Gulf states had no immediate comment.
The cable threat has surfaced before. In April, Iranian state-linked outlets including Tasnim published detailed maps of the fiber-optic cables running beneath the Strait of Hormuz.
