Iranian Officials Warn Gulf Undersea Cables Could Be Targeted in a New Attack

The threat to Gulf connectivity extends beyond the damage from a cable strike: an Iranian official says Tehran could try to block repairs and prolong outages if the United States and Israel attack Iran again. The warning comes as officials have also named digital infrastructure across the region as a potential target. That distinction matters: a damaged cable can be difficult enough to restore, but an inability to reach or work on it could turn a local break into a longer service problem.

Undersea cables carry much of the data moving between countries, including internet traffic used by businesses, public services and consumers. Their routes are physical, and repair depends on locating faults and getting specialist crews and equipment to the affected section. The source offers no detail on how Iran might prevent that work, so the threat remains a warning rather than a described operational plan. Still, repair access is a real part of the risk, not an afterthought.

Two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters that Iran has drawn up plans to hit undersea communications cables, but offered few details about possible targets or methods. One said the aim would include preventing repairs, which could extend disruption to internet connections. Without information about the proposed targets or how any action might be carried out, it’s not possible to assess the scale of the plans from these statements alone. The comments do, however, signal that Tehran is presenting cable infrastructure as part of a broader set of potential targets in a renewed conflict.

“If Iran is attacked, there will be no more red lines ... from undersea cables to military bases, including covert ones,” one official said, warning Washington not to “play with fire”. The second said Gulf allies that invested heavily in cable infrastructure “should hold Washington, not Tehran, responsible for any damage”. That framing shifts responsibility for possible damage onto the United States, even as the first official explicitly describes cables as a target Iran might strike. The contradiction is political, but it also underscores how infrastructure threats can be used to warn adversaries and shape how regional partners interpret the consequences.

Strait of Hormuz in focus

On Wednesday, Yadollah Javani, deputy head of political affairs for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Iran could target seven major internet cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz if Iranian infrastructure came under attack. Security chief Mohsen Rezaei also warned this month that US-linked digital infrastructure across the Gulf, including data centres and AI facilities, could be targeted in a renewed conflict. These are public warnings, not confirmation that any attack has taken place. They also describe a risk broader than the cables themselves, extending to facilities that support computing and data services.

The Strait of Hormuz is already a strategically sensitive passage, and the cables beneath it add a digital dimension to its significance. A cable route can connect markets and services across borders, while the physical concentration of routes in a narrow area can make disruption there consequential. The article doesn’t establish how much traffic depends on the seven cables or whether alternative routes could absorb it. That uncertainty makes precise claims about the likely impact premature.

Experts say multiple cable cuts could slow internet service and disrupt financial transactions, e-commerce and cloud computing. The scale of any disruption would depend on which cables were affected, how much traffic could be rerouted, and how quickly repair crews could reach the damage. If you're working in this space, the key point is that redundancy only helps when alternate routes have capacity and repairs remain possible. A backup path on paper may offer limited comfort if several connections are interrupted together.

This is more significant than it looks: the threat specifically includes delaying restoration, which could extend the consequences beyond the initial damage. (And this is the part most people overlook.) Connectivity depends not only on cables surviving, but also on access to the places where they break and the ability to carry out repairs. A prolonged outage could affect services that rely on stable links between networks, though the source doesn’t quantify how many users or businesses might be exposed. The officials’ comments put repair access alongside cable protection at the center of the region’s connectivity risks.

And yet, the statements leave basic questions unanswered. They don’t identify the proposed methods, say whether the plans are active, or explain what steps might prevent repairs. That gap limits what can be concluded about the immediacy of the threat. A warning can still influence how operators and governments think about resilience, but it isn’t evidence that disruption is inevitable. The uncertainty itself is part of the story.

For Gulf governments and network operators, the practical challenge is to understand where routes are concentrated, what alternatives exist, and how restoration would work during a crisis. Those are general questions for any region dependent on subsea links; the article provides no detail about specific contingency plans here. The threat also puts pressure on officials to distinguish between public rhetoric and operational indicators. For now, the reported comments establish that cables and repair access have entered the conflict’s public language.