NEW DELHI: Donald Trump has suggested fresh military action against Iran, prompting renewed concern over the Middle East conflict. Iranian security officials say Tehran has prepared plans to target undersea internet cables in the Gulf if attacked again.
Iran’s warning came on Friday as efforts to end the eight-month conflict struggled to advance. Any attack on these cables could disrupt banking, online services and communications across parts of the Middle East.
At a rally in Fort Myers, Florida, on Friday, Trump said, “We may do another little Epic Fury.” The reference was to Operation Epic Fury, the US military campaign launched against Iran on February 28. He did not say when any new attacks might happen or what they would target.
Earlier in the day, Trump argued that Washington had the ability to end the conflict quickly, but suggested it could instead allow the fighting to wind down. His comments came despite a statement earlier this month that the United States would not attack Iran before the November 3, midterm elections. Rising fuel prices have placed new pressure on his administration as voters prepare to choose the next Congress.
Iran threatens seven underwater cables in Strait of Hormuz
As per media reports, two senior Iranian security officials stated that Tehran had prepared plans to damage submarine communication lines in the Gulf if the US and Israel launched further attacks. The officials spoke anonymously and provided no evidence about how an operation would be carried out. One claimed Iran could disrupt repairs after the cables were damaged, prolonging an outage.
“If Iran is attacked, there will be no more red lines,” one official said. The official also threatened military installations. Separately, Yadollah Javani, the political deputy of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said seven major internet cables under the Strait of Hormuz could be targeted if Iranian infrastructure came under attack.
Could cutting Gulf internet cables cause a worldwide outage?
Undersea fibre-optic cables move data between countries, carrying around 99 per cent of global internet traffic, according to the International Telecommunication Union. But less than 1 per cent of international bandwidth passes through the Strait of Hormuz, telecommunications researcher Alan Mauldin of TeleGeography told media outlets.
That means a strike there would not automatically shut down the world’s internet. It could, however, slow connections in affected areas and interrupt payments, online shopping and cloud-based services.
The warning comes as Gulf states spend heavily on data centres and artificial intelligence facilities. Iranian strikes damaged two Amazon Web Services sites in the United Arab Emirates in March and infrastructure near another facility in Bahrain was also hit. Microsoft has announced plans to invest more than $400 million in undersea and land-based connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.
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