Can the Strait of Hormuz blockade break the Internet? Premium

Few people realise that the ocean floor beneath the Persian Gulf and Red Sea is crisscrossed with thousands of kilometres of fibre-optic cable.

When the United States and Israel launched major strikes against Iran on February 28, 2026, global markets immediately focused on oil prices. The strikes, which killed Iran’s supreme leader in what became known as Operation Epic Fury, triggered swift retaliation. By early March, Iran’s military effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and within days, commercial shipping through this critical waterway had virtually ceased. Brent crude, which had hovered around $65 before the conflict, climbed above $100 a barrel, sending ripple effects across the global economy.

But beneath those surface-level concerns lies a far quieter and potentially more devastating crisis. Few people realise that the ocean floor beneath the Persian Gulf and Red Sea is crisscrossed with thousands of kilometres of fibre-optic cable. These subsea cables threading through both maritime chokepoints form the literal backbone of the global digital world. When you send an email to someone across the world, you’re almost certainly relying on these fragile underwater lines.

For nations with heavy digital economies, the situation looks genuinely alarming. Countries across Asia, Africa, and Europe depend on data flowing freely through the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz to reach each other. India, which has been rapidly building out its cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure, is particularly vulnerable. The country’s AI ambitions, built on massive data centres in the Gulf, now sit squarely in an active war zone with their digital lifelines passing through contested waters.

What makes this moment historically unprecedented is that both of the world’s critical maritime data corridors have effectively closed simultaneously for the first time. While Iran’s blockade has shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the situation in the Red Sea has also deteriorated, with the Houthis threatening to resume their attacks on shipping in solidarity with Iran. Before the Internet era, this might have been merely an energy crisis. Now it’s something far more complex. The redundancy that keeps global networks functioning, the assumption that if one cable fails, data can reroute through another, is disappearing rapidly.

The actual danger to these cables isn’t necessarily from deliberate military strikes, though that remains a possibility. Instead, the risk comes from the chaos of warfare itself. When merchant vessels are attacked or forced to take evasive action to avoid missiles and drones, their anchors drag across the seafloor. Those dragging anchors can sever cables in seconds, and historically this collateral damage has been the leading cause of subsea cable failures during conflicts. It gives state actors convenient plausible deniability when cables mysteriously go down.

The real nightmare scenario that might keep telecommunication providers awake is far worse than cable severance. During peacetime, specialised repair vessels can locate and fix a damaged cable in a matter of days. Now, those ships sit idle on the dock. Iran’s military has made it clear that sending slow-moving, stationary repair vessels into the strait is suicidal. What would normally be a brief interruption in service could now stretch into months of severe internet slowdowns and digital blackouts for entire nations.