Three sanctioned tankers linked to Iran and an Iranian fishing boat were tracked near major subsea Internet cables in the Gulf of Oman in October, according to the maritime intelligence firm Windward, whose tracking was reported by the Financial Times. No cable damage has been reported.
The ships were loitering near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Six active cables cross the strait, linking the Middle East to Europe, Africa and Asia, and two more have segments under construction there. The movements could signal that Iran is preparing to attack the cables if the US and Israel strike again.
The exposure is uneven. Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar depend entirely on subsea connections running through the strait to reach the outside world. Others are exposed too: one third of India's westbound Internet traffic passes through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
The tactic has precedents. Cables were severed in the Red Sea in 2024, and investigators in the Baltic Sea have repeatedly examined ships suspected of dragging anchors across cables. Both cases share a feature that makes this one hard to read: a vessel parked over a cable is cheap to deploy and easy to explain away as ordinary maritime activity.
That ambiguity may be the point. A ship sitting over a cable costs little and breaks nothing, yet it tells governments and telecom operators that the option exists. Whether these tankers are surveying, signaling or staging is something tracking data alone cannot settle.