Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has pointed to undersea cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz while promising new targets, but industry figures put the route's share of global international bandwidth below 1%.
The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) said in a May 20, 2026, statement that five active submarine cable system segments cross the strait. Drawing on TeleGeography analysis, it said the route carried less than 1% of global international bandwidth. The committee identified Gulf countries as facing the greater connectivity risk and said traffic could be rerouted through other submarine and land connections.
At a Tehran event Oct. 19, IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi claimed seven major cables ran beneath Hormuz. He asserted that the links supported internet access and commercial data activity worldwide. Mohebbi also said the Guards would reveal new targets and weapons, in remarks carried by Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.
Mohebbi did not identify a cable as a target or announce an attack plan. His figure exceeds the ICPC's May count, which covered active submarine cable system segments.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, discussed digital infrastructure in an Oct. 11 interview with Press TV. Rezaei said undersea cables, data centers and artificial intelligence facilities could become targets if fighting resumed. He said Iran had not included those facilities among its targets.
The strait is also an oil shipping route. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated average flows at 4.9 million barrels per day in the second quarter of 2026, down from 21.6 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of 2025. Those quarterly figures do not measure shipments at the time of Mohebbi's warning.
The ICPC's assessment places the main potential connectivity impact in the Gulf. It also identifies other sea and land routes that networks could use to carry traffic if a cable were damaged.
