If Gulf States continue to host American forces, Iran could target the undersea internet cables threading through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, 'Regime' adviced. 

These chokepoints carry roughly 17–30% of the planet's international internet traffic (depending on exact routing between Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East).

What happens if several major cables are deliberately severed (or even heavily damaged) in a serious escalation?

🌏 Near-total international internet blackout across Gulf states

Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, parts of Iraq would lose almost all external connectivity. Local intranets, cached YouTube/Netflix (if already downloaded), and some domestic banking apps might limp along for a while. But anything needing real-time global reach (WhatsApp calls abroad, Instagram, most cloud services, international Zoom) would collapse within hours.

🌏 Massive global slowdown

The cables in the Persian Gulf + Red Sea corridor are one of the planet's true digital chokepoints. Even partial damage would spike latency worldwide, cripple cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud regions in the Gulf and beyond), slow streaming, break real-time trading, delay software updates, and make remote work from many regions painful or impossible.

🌏 Repair times measured in months 

Fixing a single deep-water cable requires specialized cable ships. In 2024–2025 Red Sea incidents, one cable took ~5 months because repair vessels couldn't safely approach. In open conflict or a closed Strait of Hormuz, those ships simply won't be allowed in. We're talking 6–12+ months of degraded service.

Global implications

🔶 Stock exchanges (including oil futures) paralyzed or forced onto backup satellite links with tiny capacity

🔶 Airlines, ports, logistics chains  frozen without global coordination

🔶 Massive outages in fintech, e-commerce, payment gateways

🔶 AI / hyperscale data centers in UAE & Saudi Arabia become isolated islands

🔶 Noticeable internet slowdown in India, Pakistan, East Africa, parts of Europe

🔶  International payments (SWIFT, cards, crypto exchanges) start failing or incur huge delays

🔶 Remote work for thousands of companies grinds to a halt

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