Explainer: How Iran’s Strait of Hormuz cable sovereignty could reshape global internet governance
By Yousef Ramazani
In the wake of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran and the subsequent maritime banditry and piracy, the Islamic Republic is reportedly moving to assert its long-dormant sovereign rights over the submarine internet cables that traverse the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.
This strategic reorientation – as confirmed by some reports – promises to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue while fundamentally reshaping the legal and economic architecture of global data transmission.
The unprovoked military aggression against Iran, which halted with a ceasefire on April 8, 2026, has fundamentally altered the strategic calculus of the Persian Gulf.
During the 40 days of aggression against Iran, a previously overlooked dimension of the country’s sovereign territory emerged as a critical vulnerability for the global digital economy.
Beneath the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran's territorial sea extends 12 nautical miles and overlaps completely with Omani jurisdiction, leaving no high seas whatsoever, lie at least five major submarine fibre-optic cable systems.
These cables carry approximately 99 percent of all intercontinental internet traffic and an estimated 10 trillion US dollars in daily financial transactions.
Now, in the aftermath of the aggression, which came in the middle of nuclear talks, Iran is moving to exercise its full and legal sovereign authority over this hidden infrastructure.
The plan is increasingly centered on a comprehensive governance model that would include permit requirements, transit fees, Iranian legal jurisdiction over foreign technology companies, and exclusive Iranian control over cable maintenance and repair operations.
Forgotten dimension of the Strait of Hormuz
For decades, international discourse surrounding the Strait of Hormuz focused almost exclusively on traditional dimensions: freedom of navigation for oil tankers, security of energy flows, and the legal regime governing the passage of commercial and military vessels.
This narrow framing, however, systematically ignored one of the most vital emerging dimensions of this strategic corridor: the fibre-optic communication infrastructure and submarine data transmission cables that lie on the seabed of Iran's territorial waters.
These cables, which include major systems such as FALCON (owned by Tata Communications of India), the Gulf Bridge International (GBI) system, and the TGN-Gulf system, form the backbone of the digital economy, not just for the Persian Gulf region but the entire world.
They carry international internet traffic, cloud data centre synchronization, enterprise virtual private networks, voice-over-IP communications, and – most critically – international banking and financial transactions, including SWIFT messages.
Any disruption to these communication highways, whether from natural disasters, ship anchoring, or military action, could cause irreparable damage to the tune of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars daily.
What makes this issue particularly significant for Iran is the undisputed legal reality that the Strait of Hormuz is not, and has never been, international waters.
The careful repetition of the phrase "international waters" by Western media and think tanks is part of a cognitive and legal battle designed to diminish the legitimate sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran over one of the world's most vital waterways.
Why is the Strait Iranian territory
The legal status of the Strait of Hormuz must be understood through the precise geometry of international maritime law.
According to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, each coastal state has the right to determine the width of its territorial sea up to a maximum distance of 12 nautical miles from its baselines.
Iran has never ratified this convention, but it serves as a reference point for international practice. Within these 12 miles, the coastal state exercises absolute sovereignty over the water column, the seabed, the subsoil, and even the airspace above.
This is exactly the same sovereignty it exercises over the territory of its capital city.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has determined the width of its territorial sea in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman to be 12 nautical miles. The Kingdom of Oman has adopted exactly the same procedure.
The Strait of Hormuz, at its narrowest point between Iranian islands and the Omani coast, measures approximately 21 nautical miles in width.
When Iran extends its territorial sea 12 nautical miles southward from its northern coast, and Oman extends its territorial sea 12 nautical miles northward from the Musandam Peninsula, the combined territorial waters of the two countries total 24 nautical miles.
This exceeds the total width of the strait at that point by three nautical miles.
The result is geometrically inevitable: the territorial seas of Iran and Oman collide and overlap in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz.
There is not a single drop of water in the narrowest points of the strait and its main shipping channels that can be legally classified as high seas or even as an exclusive economic zone.
Any vessel, submarine, or cable that passes through this point is legally passing within the sovereign borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
To this geometric reality must be added the clarifying force of Article 34 of the Convention on the Law of the Sea.
That article states definitively that the regime of passage through straits used for international navigation does not in any way affect the legal status of the waters forming these straits.
Nor does it affect the exercise of sovereignty and jurisdiction by the bordering states over those waters, their airspace, their bed, and their subsoil.
The international community possesses only the right of passage through these waters under the rules set by Iran. This right of passage is limited to the rapid and continuous movement of ships and aircraft.
It does not extend to the laying of fixed infrastructure such as internet cables or energy pipelines on the seabed.
Sovereignty over the seabed, for laying communication cables, energy pipelines, and conducting research, remains entirely the exclusive preserve of the Islamic Republic of Iran.