Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has named the undersea fiber cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz as "legitimate new targets" if the war with the United States flares up again.
General Hossein Mohebbi, an IRGC spokesman, said "seven large cables pass beneath the Strait of Hormuz, and all internet and commercial data pass through them." He added that a "third phase" of the conflict would reveal a "new geography" with "new targets and new weapons." Yadollah Javani, the IRGC's political deputy, went further in comments reported separately, suggesting Iran would hit the cables if its own infrastructure is attacked. Fighting began in February, when the US, Israel and others started military action. It has cooled but not ended.
One cable the IRGC referenced appears to be Asia-Africa-Europe-1, which runs 15,050 miles from Asia to Europe through Oman, the UAE and Qatar. The UAE and Qatar both border Iran across the water.
Mohebbi's claim that all internet traffic runs through those seven cables reads as rhetoric. The world's data travels over many more routes than that. The real significance is the choice of target. Cables carry traffic for countries that have no part in the war, including Iran's immediate neighbors, and that is what makes the threat a lever.
An unnamed Iranian spokesman made the same point, saying Tehran has weighed cutting the cables several times since the war began but held back because it would mean "declaring war on the whole world and building new enemies." He called it "an option if Trump escalates."
Experts treat the threat as credible. Alessio Patalano, a war and strategy professor at King's College London, said it has been "a rather clear possibility for a long time," noting that divers could go to the seabed and cut or destroy the cables. He pointed to the 2022 Nord Stream 2 pipeline attack near Denmark, supposedly carried out by Ukrainian agents, as proof that such sabotage happens. Seabed infrastructure is also under watch elsewhere: a Russian ship loitered for 14 hours less than a mile from five cables linking the UK with Spain, Portugal, Canada and the US before a Royal Navy attack helicopter chased it away.
The open question is whom the threat is meant to pressure. A cut would hurt Gulf states and distant economies far more directly than Washington, which is exactly the cost Iran's own spokesman said it wanted to avoid.