Several tankers linked to Iran have been loitering over underwater Internet cables in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz, a possible indication that the Iranian government is preparing to attack such underwater infrastructure in response to any new US and Israeli attacks.
According to the Financial Times, in October maritime intelligence firm Windward tracked the movements of three sanctioned oil tankers and an Iranian fishing vessel near important undersea cables. Currently, six active cables cross the disputed Strait of Hormuz, linking the Middle East with Europe, Africa and Asia, and two more cables have segments under construction in the region.
Four countries, including Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, depend entirely on those underwater telecommunications connections that pass through the Strait of Hormuz bottleneck to connect with the outside world. But other countries also rely heavily on the region’s undersea cable network: a third of India’s westbound internet traffic passes through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
One cable under construction, the 2Africa cable, is owned by a technology consortium that includes the American company Meta. That was one of the main cable corridors visited by drifting ships linked to Iran.
Windward used ship tracking data and satellite imagery to track ships as they slowed and turned near multiple cables, with some ships then “going dark” by turning off their automatic identification system (AIS) transponders that normally transmit their location and other information.
Such patterns of movement and behavior suggest that Iran-linked ships may be “mapping cable routes, or placing payloads or mines on them while it is dark,” Windward told the Financial Times.
Windward highlighted examples of two sanctioned tankers linked to Iran that spent days drifting “directly over regional cable corridors…both without any commercial reason to stop” in an October 26 blog post. Both ships were not carrying commercial cargo.
