Iran has insisted for weeks that it has the right to charge international ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping route off the coast of the Islamic republic.
Now, two news agencies affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have issued proposals urging Tehran to go further by imposing fees on the global tech firms that operate undersea fiberoptic cables running through the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the open sea.
The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has effectively closed since the United States and Israel launched a bombing campaign on February 28, remains a key sticking point in ending the war. Tehran has claimed sovereignty over the strategic waterway, which is rejected by the international community.
Experts say the proposals calling for Iran to demand payment for undersea cables under the strait is more of a threat than a viable plan.
“The risk of adversarial subsea cable cuts has always been there, but an open threat from a nation-state like Iran adds urgency,” Isik Mater, director of research at the London-based Internet monitoring group NetBlocks, told RFE/RL.
Undersea cables are mostly owned and operated by international tech companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. The cables carry SWIFT transactions, cloud traffic, and general Internet data between Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf.
If the submarine cables running through Hormuz were severed, the impact on ordinary people across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe would be immediate and wide-ranging.
Streaming services would buffer or fail entirely. Messaging apps would slow or go dark. Video calls would drop. Online banking and card payments could be disrupted. Cloud-dependent services — from e-mail to workplace tools — would degrade.
Internet providers could reroute traffic through surviving cables or satellites, but capacity is limited, meaning slower speeds for everyone even where connectivity survives. Repairs typically take weeks, sometimes months.
What’s The Pitch?
The Tasnim and Fars news agencies argued that Iran should both monetize and assert sovereignty over the web of undersea cables that crisscross the strait.
The legal foundation for the proposals draws on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which Iran has signed but never ratified.
Citing Article 34, Tasnim argued that transit passage rights granted to shipping do not eclipse Iran’s sovereign rights over the seabed. At the strait’s narrowest point, the territorial sea claims of Iran and Oman overlap entirely, meaning the cables physically sit in Iranian-claimed territory.
Building cables there without authorization, Tasnim claimed, amounts to “occupying Iranian soil underwater” and requires both licensing and fees.
The revenue model is borrowed loosely from Egypt, which Tasnim claims earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually from undersea cables that run through the Suez Canal.
Tasnim and Fars also argued that Iran should compel tech giants to formally operate under Iranian law and partner with Iranian technology companies. Fars described the goal explicitly as turning Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz into a “digital power lever,” with Iranian firms controlling the maintenance and repairs of the cables.
Does It Hold Up?
Experts say the legal arguments provided by the Iranian news agencies have significant weaknesses.
While coastal states do retain sovereignty over their territorial seabed, Tasnim ignores UNCLOS Article 79, which explicitly protects the right for global Internet providers to build and maintain undersea cables.
Mater of NetBlocks said the Egypt comparison has “limited weight” because Cairo “licenses transit and landing points on its own territory, and these agreements have been entered willingly.”
“By contrast Iran’s position is more tenuous, and though it has control of its territorial waters it doesn’t own a significant stretch of the routes,” she added.
Mater said the proposals’ “biggest red flag” is the call for international tech firms to be forced to formally operate under Iranian law and partner with Iranian technology companies.
Under Iranian law, “communications are typically controlled and monitored, before even considering sanctions and geopolitical barriers,” she said.
“This makes Iran’s demand come off as more of a ‘protection’ fee, similar to what they’ve been doing with tankers, distant from any kind of conventional transit licensing agreement we usually see in the industry,” Mater said.
Before a US sea blockade of the Strait of Hormuz was imposed in mid-April, Iran was charging commercial ships up to $2 million to transit the strait, although few vessels were making the passage. Maritime traffic in the strait has come to a standstill since the American barricade.
Iran has a history of imposing severe restrictions on Internet usage. The authorities have enforced an Internet blackout since February 28 and refused to restore access since a cease-fire came into effect on April 8.
“Iranian authorities haven’t hesitated to cut off their own citizens’ connectivity and may well seek to sever external links if demands are unmet,” said Mater. “Although international cables aren’t under Iran’s direct control, sabotage via ships’ anchors or diving teams would be within their capabilities in the strait.”
