Earlier this month, the IRGC proposed charging foreign operators for their use of subsea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz. While the conflict has significantly impacted the ability to build and repair cables in the region, such a fee regime is largely unfeasible for a multitude of reasons.
First, there is no technical mechanism to gate traffic without physically controlling the landing stations at either end, most of which sit in the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and India, not Iran. Iran hosts no significant landing infrastructure on these major cable systems, which means it has no chokehold on the data itself. The singular landing station on the Strait (Bandar Abbas) only has the FALCON cable landing.
Second, the legal basis is equally weak. Under customary international law — even setting aside UNCLOS, which Iran has not ratified — coastal states have no recognised right to levy fees on cables transiting their continental shelf or EEZ. Any such demand would be universally rejected and have no enforcement mechanism short of acts of war rather than a legitimate toll regime.
Enforcement also runs into a sanctions wall. Cable consortiums are owned by US and European tech giants and international telecoms subject to sanctions regimes that explicitly prohibit payments to IRGC-linked entities. Any operator that complied would likely face secondary sanctions.
The damage to global cable infrastructure as a result of this conflict is already significant. Work on 2Africa Pearls, intended to be the world’s longest subsea cable, has come to a halt in the region due to security risks, with Alcatel Submarine Networks issuing force majeure notices for several regional projects. Cable repair ships deployed to fix cuts from late 2025 have suspended operations indefinitely as sending vessels into an active war zone is too risky. Any cables already damaged by missiles, naval mines, or ship anchors dragged across the seabed will remain severed for the duration of the conflict, degrading connectivity in real time across parts of Asia and Europe.
The fee rhetoric, then, is best understood as grey-zone signalling — a way to assert leverage but also accelerate the very infrastructure diversification that will ultimately reduce Iran’s relevance to global connectivity.