Reports have highlighted one of the less talked about threats from the war in Iran — the risk to undersea cables in the Strait of Hormuz and the nearby Red Sea.
According to The EurAsian Times, Iran, which has already closed the traffic of shipments in the Strait, in resisting the American attacks, can potentially disrupt global communications and financial interactions via undersea cables.
Over the last years, undersea communication cables have increasingly been considered potential military targets in modern hybrid and gray-zone warfare due to their critical role as the backbone of global communication and finance. They carry over 99% of all international digital traffic and facilitate trillions of dollars in daily financial transactions, making them strategically vital assets.
According to studies, the $10 trillion in daily financial transactions travel globally across 1.5 million kilometers of submarine cables. The economic importance of these cables reportedly makes them a vulnerable target.
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EurAsian Times mentioned that these cables are said to be the arteries that connect nation-states and their people in virtually every human activity, including trade, commerce, entertainment, and social interactions. In fact, global communications via satellites is minuscule compared to the transoceanic ones. Private companies and consortia own and operate a network of over 500 commercial undersea telecommunications cables that form the backbone of the global internet. Any interference to this can cause major disruptions.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump claimed that American forces could strike “every single target” in Iran within just two weeks in an interview on Sunday. He also declared that he Islamic Republic has already been “militarily defeated.”
While talking to investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, Trump slammed NATO as a “paper tiger” and accused Washington’s European allies of failing to support the campaign against Tehran.
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“They’re militarily defeated. In their own minds, maybe they don’t know that. But I think they do,” Trump said in the interview, before adding: “That doesn’t mean they’re done.” He suggested the U.S. military could “go in for two more weeks and do every single target. We have certain targets that we wanted, and we’ve done probably 70 percent of them, but we have other targets that we could conceivably hit.”
“But even if we didn’t do that, you know, that would just be final touches,” Trump said. On NATO, he said the alliance “has proven to be a paper tiger,” adding “they weren’t there to help.”
This comes amid talks about a potential ceasefire. Officials involved in the talks say both sides have made incremental progress, but major differences remain, leaving the outcome far from certain. Most recently, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said Tehran’s proposal, sent via Pakistan, which has served as a mediator, included an immediate end to the war on all fronts, a halt to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and guarantees of no further attacks on Iran. Trump responded to this, saying it was unacceptable.