The Islamic Republic of Iran is under increasing pressure from hardline media outlets and figures to escalate the conflict by severing the international fiber-optic cables running beneath the Strait of Hormuz and the Arab Gulf by hardline media outlets and figures.
Hossein Shariatmadari, managing editor of the ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper, insisted that disrupting or cutting off the internet cables was a “necessary measure” to respond to the “crimes of America and its wicked allies.”
“Is it not our indisputable right, in order to bring these sources of evil to their knees and cut off their lifeline, to prevent internet cables from passing through the depths of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz?” Shariatmadari wrote.
“This necessary measure could be carried out by seriously disrupting the cables’ operation or even cutting them.”
Though he admitted that such an action would violate international law and add to the list of countries suffering from Iranian actions who were not directly involved in the war, he insisted that their failure to “rise up” against the United States made it acceptable.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and state-affiliated media have frequently called on Iran to exploit the cables. The IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency proposed forcing countries to pay fees for the use of the cables, similar to the strategy Iran has attempted to employ in the strait.
The Wall Street Journal reported in mid-August that the IRGC had developed plans for “further escalation,” including sabotaging the cables.
Iran could threaten global economy by targeting cables
Military historian Lynette Nusbacher, a former British Army intelligence officer and former devil’s advocate to Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee, highlighted to The Jerusalem Post that the cables carry huge importance for the global economy, especially for China.
Nusbacher said that Iran had not so far needed to “play that card” because it used the Strait of Hormuz as a pressure point against the global economy.
However, American officials have repeatedly claimed that new pipelines in the region would reduce Hormuz’s strategic importance, and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted that American attacks had left Iran’s ability to control the strait significantly degraded.
An unnamed American source told Saudi-based media Al Arabiya on Wednesday that CENTCOM’s Tuesday night strikes were a preemptive response to Iranian attacks on the undersea communications cables.
If true, the ISW noted, it could indicate that the Iranian regime is considering expanding its “coercive activity.”
Nusbacher said it was possible that Iran could damage a specific, minimum-impact cable as a “warning... to show the world that they can do it” and that global markets could be seriously impacted as a response, though the effects would not be as calculable as disruption to oil trade.
“It would catch serious attention including from Europe,” she said, but noted that the American response would depend on Washington’s appetite for escalation.
It is also possible that Iran would carry out such damage in a way that would leave room for it to deny its role, in which case the response would be “weaker.”
Iran attacks may bring US back to negotiation table
Such attacks could result in the US returning to the negotiating table, though Nusbacher said Iran was unlikely to receive significantly more concessions than they had with the memorandum of understanding (MoU).
A more extreme option would be for the IRGC to target as many cables as possible with their munition “to create maximum blast damage,” which would cause significant damage globally and “fairly indiscriminately.”
“The instant sudden diminution of capacity would cause significant damage to banking and supply chains all over the world,” Nusbacher predicted. “It would be a 2008 financial crisis-level event.”
She added that the US would have the most to lose from such an outcome, and it had no leverage left to prevent it.
Perhaps the only country with the necessary leverage over Iran to prevent such an action is China, she continued.
A major supplier to Iran and its proxies and a buyer of Iranian oil cargoes, China will be “loaning Iran a lot of money to pay for their post-war reconstruction,” she said.
“The Chinese government is already managing global petrochemical prices by absorbing economic damage internally; they would take significant damage not only from [an] immediate diminution of global commercial communication but also from a near-future global economic recession.”