Insights

The escalating conflict between Iran and a U.S.-led coalition has dealt a critical blow to global digital infrastructure, forcing Meta and its partners to halt work on the 2Africa Pearls project in the Persian Gulf—an extension of the broader 2Africa subsea cable system.

This crisis has transformed the strategic Strait of Hormuz from a promising digital corridor into an active war zone, triggering a cascade of delays, force majeure declarations, and a frantic search for overland alternatives that carries its own set of profound geopolitical risks.

The conflict has effectively created a second major chokepoint in the Hormuz Strait and the Persian Gulf, compounding the existing crisis in the Red Sea. Together, these simultaneous closures threaten to throw the future of internet connectivity across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe into grave doubt.

2Africa Pearls Project Grinds to a Halt

By November 2025, the Meta-led 2Africa consortium had completed the core 2Africa infrastructure—a landmark 45,000-kilometer subsea cable system designed to set a new standard for global connectivity. While its planned landings in the Red Sea have faced delays due to ongoing risks off the coast of Yemen, the 2Africa Pearls—an extension connecting Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, and India—was scheduled to go live in 2026.

Those plans have now been shattered by the war. According to multiple reports confirmed by Bloomberg and industry publications, Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) , the French state-owned company contracted to lay the cable, has been forced to issue force majeure notices to its clients. ASN has declared it can no longer safely operate in the Persian Gulf due to active military operations.

A significant portion of the cable has already been laid on the seabed but remains unconnected to its landing stations. The cable-laying vessel Ile De Batz is now effectively stranded off the coast of Dammam, Saudi Arabia, unable to complete its mission.

This is not the first setback for the colossal project. Just four months earlier, work on another crucial 2Africa segment in the Red Sea was halted due to Houthi rebel attacks and permitting challenges, underscoring the compounding vulnerability of cables in the region. The 2Africa system, once completed, is designed to carry data traffic for more than 3 billion people, linking Africa, Europe, and Asia.

A Cascade of Failures: Other Major Projects Paused

The impact of the Iran conflict extends far beyond 2Africa Pearls. Multiple digital infrastructure projects across the region—including SEA-ME-WE 6, Fibre in Gulf (FIG) and the WorldLink Transit Cable Project—have been thrown into uncertainty.

SEA-ME-WE 6: A Critical Corridor Stalled

SEA-ME-WE 6 (SMW6) is a major next-generation subsea cable system connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa, developed by a consortium including France's Orange and Singapore's Singtel, with U.S.-based SubCom as the supplier. As the Red Sea became an increasingly high-risk chokepoint, the SMW6 consortium had prioritized a terrestrial bypass through Saudi Arabia to ensure network resilience. Rather than relying solely on a marine path through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, SMW6 adopted a hybrid subsea-terrestrial architecture.

The SEA-ME-WE 6 Gulf Extension (also known as the Al Khaleej Cable System), similar to 2Africa Pearls, was set to run through the Strait of Hormuz and land on Saudi Arabia's eastern coast at Al Khobar, connecting to branches serving Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE. From Al Khobar, traffic would traverse a 1,000+ km terrestrial bridge across the Arabian Peninsula via stc's (center3) national fiber backbone, bypassing the southern Red Sea entirely before reconnecting with subsea segments at Yanbu or Duba. From there, it could reach Egypt and Europe via the northern Red Sea, or use the Saudi Vision Cable (SVC) to reach Europe through Jordan and Israel, or leverage stc's latest SilkLink initiative via Syria.

Originally scheduled for service in 2024, SMW6's completion had already been postponed to June 2027 before the Iran crisis (the system did achieve its first landing in Marseille on April 27, 2024). The indefinite delay of the SMW6 now caused by the conflict will further strain the already tight supply-demand balance for capacity on the critical Asia-Europe (Singapore-Europe) submarine cable corridor.

Fibre in Gulf (FIG): From Subsea to Land

The Fibre in Gulf (FIG) project, developed by Ooredoo Group and supplied by ASN, connects seven GCC countries—Qatar, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. Ooredoo had simultaneously committed $500 million to a land-based alternative route through Iraq and Turkey to Europe, designed to bypass the risky Red Sea. Now, with the Persian Gulf itself becoming a battlefield—even more dangerous than the Red Sea—FIG's subsea component faces an uncertain future.

WorldLink: A Project Built on a Shattered Premise

The recently announced $700 million WorldLink Transit Cable Project now appears likely to die on the vine. Developed by an Iraqi-UAE consortium—including Iraq's Tech 964, DIL Technologies, and UAE-based Breeze Investments—WorldLink was designed as a dual-architecture system combining a submarine fiber-optic segment from Abu Dhabi to Faw in southern Iraq with a dual terrestrial fiber network through federal Iraq and the Kurdistan Region to Turkey.

The project's entire premise and commercial viability rested on positioning the Persian Gulf as a viable alternative corridor for Asia-Europe traffic, complementing the traditional Red Sea-Egypt-Mediterranean route. The Iran crisis has fundamentally shattered that premise. With the Gulf now a conflict zone, the project's core assumption is invalid, and its commercial feasibility has collapsed. WorldLink will not proceed.

The Immediate Crisis: Maintenance Paralysis

However, the most severe and immediate consequence of the Iran crisis is not project delays—it is the complete paralysis of essential maintenance. The situation has reached a critical point where both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are effectively "no-go zones" for commercial cable repair vessels.

Cable repair ships, already deployed to fix cuts that occurred in late 2025, have been forced to suspend operations indefinitely. As industry experts warn, sending vessels into an active war zone is simply "too risky." Consequently, any cables damaged by missiles, naval mines, or the anchors of stricken ships will remain severed—potentially for the entire duration of the conflict, degrading global connectivity in real time.

The stakes are clear: It took nearly half a year to repair the four major subsea cables cut in the Red Sea in February 2024—AAE-1, Seacom/TGN-EA, EIG. With both chokepoints now closed, the response time to several existing outages and future outages in the region could be catastrophic.

A Watershed Moment for the Global Subsea Industry

The simultaneous closure of the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz represents an unprecedented stress test for the global internet. The network faces its most serious threat in decades, with the risk profile moving from "grey-zone ambiguity" to direct military confrontation.

The implications for the subsea cable industry are profound and lasting:

A Capital Rethink

Hyperscalers like Meta, Google, and Amazon—which have committed billions to the region—are being forced to reassess. Meta's longer-term response is Project Waterworth, a new 50,000-km cable designed to explicitly bypass the Middle East by connecting the US, India, South Africa, and Brazil. But that is years away from completion, leaving a massive gap in the interim.

The End of the "Safe Alternative"

For a brief period, the Persian Gulf was seen as a safer, faster alternative to the troubled Red Sea. That narrative has been shattered by the current conflict, forcing planners to look at even more remote and expensive routes.

Economic Shockwaves

The war has sent energy costs soaring, directly impacting the economics of power-hungry data centers. Brent crude futures have surged 42.3% since pre-conflict levels, while European natural gas prices have jumped 57%, creating one of the most significant energy supply shocks in decades. These spikes threaten the business models of facilities from the Gulf to Frankfurt, where electricity already represents the dominant operating expense for cloud and AI infrastructure.

For India—which has set its sights on becoming a $270 billion data center hub—the timing could not be worse. A data center hub of this scale is critically dependent on international subsea cables for traffic routing and data exchange with global markets. The country's westward connectivity with Europe relies heavily on digital corridors traversing the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, both now active conflict zones. While India maintains eastern-facing subsea cables connecting to the United States via Singapore and beyond , its critical Europe-bound traffic remains dangerously exposed. If the Strait of Hormuz closure persists, India's AI ambitions may face not only soaring power costs but also degraded international connectivity—a double blow to its digital aspirations.

A New Era of "Seabed Infrastructure Warfare"

Cybersecurity experts warn that we are witnessing the emergence of a new battlefield. Submarine cables are now strategic assets—as vital as energy pipelines—and conflicts will increasingly target these digital arteries.

Rebuilding a Secure Eurasia Digital Corridor

The concurrent closure of the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz—the first such event in history—has shattered the assumption that the global internet's physical backbone is resilient. With both critical maritime chokepoints now active war zones, the international community is being forced to accelerate the development of alternative digital highways that bypass the Middle East entirely.

Several overland and Arctic routes are emerging as potential solutions:

The Overland "Silk Road" Options

The Northern Corridor: Running through Russia, this route connects Asia (particularly China) to Europe via Mongolia and into Russia. However, its viability is complicated by sanctions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, though Chinese-Russian trade continues to drive development.

The Middle Corridor: Also known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, this path runs through Kazakhstan, crosses the Caspian Sea into the Caucasus, traverses Azerbaijan and Georgia, and crosses the Black Sea into Romania and Bulgaria, or alternatively through Turkey. At roughly 7,000 kilometers, it offers a Russia-bypassing alternative, though it faces challenges including multiple border crossings, mountainous terrain, and the need for sea transport across two inland seas.

The Arctic Ambition

The most ambitious new route lies in the far north. The Polar Connect initiative—a resilient Arctic submarine cable system linking Europe, North America, and East Asia—has gained significant momentum from the current crisis. The project, now designated a Cable Project of European Interest (CPEI) by the European Union, has secured an additional €5 million in EU funding through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) .

Scheduled to go live around 2030, Polar Connect will span the Arctic Ocean at depths reaching 4,000 meters, creating the shortest digital route between Europe, Asia, and North America while reducing latency and improving performance for global data flows. Critically, it offers a path that entirely avoids the volatile Middle East and Red Sea corridors.

However, the commercial viability of Polar Connect—and similar Arctic cable projects—has long been a subject of debate. When the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz corridors are fully operational, the construction cost of an Arctic route is estimated to be roughly double that of traditional subsea cable projects through temperate waters . The extreme environment demands icebreaker escorts during installation, specialized armored cabling, and contingency planning for operations under multi-year sea ice—all of which drive up capital expenditure significantly . Even after completion, the cables face the persistent threat of being severed by moving icebergs or ice scour, as demonstrated by the Quintillion Cable in Alaska, which was rendered inoperable for six months following ice-related damage . Repairs in the Arctic can take three times longer and cost significantly more than in other regions due to the scarcity of specialized vessels and the narrow weather windows for intervention . Under normal geopolitical circumstances, these factors make the business case for Arctic cables difficult to justify.

But the Iran crisis has fundamentally altered that calculus. If the closure of the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz persists—or if the region remains a perpetual conflict zone—the industry will have no choice but to explore and develop any available secure digital pathways, regardless of cost. The traditional assumption that "cheaper routes will always exist" no longer holds. When the safe passage of global data traffic is at stake, the economics shift from cost optimization to risk mitigation. In such a scenario, the Arctic—once dismissed as a futuristic concept—becomes a logical, necessary, and strategically unavoidable option. The crisis has transformed Polar Connect from an ambitious vision into a potential lifeline for Eurasia's digital future.

 The crisis will drive the explore of other projects traversing the Arctic.

Conclusion: Drawing a New Map

While the Iran crisis has inflicted immediate and severe damage—paralyzing cable maintenance, indefinitely stalling major projects like SEA-ME-WE 6 and WorldLink, and disrupting live networks—its most profound and lasting impact lies elsewhere. The conflict has fundamentally shattered the industry's long-held assumption that the Red Sea and Persian Gulf represent viable, secure corridors for the world's digital backbone.

The simultaneous closure of both chokepoints has forced a strategic reckoning: neither the Red Sea nor the Gulf can be relied upon as safe arteries for global data traffic. In response, the international community is now racing to construct alternative, more resilient digital highways—whether across Central Asia's "Middle Corridor," along Russia's northern land routes, or beneath the Arctic ice through initiatives like Polar Connect.

These emerging pathways, once viewed as secondary or experimental, are now being elevated into essential components of a diversified, secure Eurasia digital infrastructure. The Iran crisis has thus acted as a catalyst, accelerating a structural transformation in how the world thinks about connectivity. The future of global communications will no longer depend on a few vulnerable maritime chokepoints, but on a network of resilient, redundant corridors designed to withstand geopolitical shocks.

From a purely technical and cost perspective, the Northern Corridor is the most mature, lowest-cost, and easiest-to-implement option among all proposed alternatives. The fiber-optic infrastructure in Russia is already well-developed, with existing rights-of-way, operational terrestrial networks, and established maintenance protocols, including the latest TEA NEXT project and various other terrestrial cables traversing Russia. Unlike the Middle Corridor, which requires multiple sea crossings and border handovers, or the Arctic route, which demands specialized ice-class vessels and faces extreme environmental challenges, the Northern Corridor offers a straightforward overland path with proven technology and predictable operational costs. The sole inhibiting factor is geopolitical: the risk of sanctions and the perceived strategic dependency on Russian-controlled infrastructure. If that barrier could be overcome—or if the crisis in the Middle East becomes so severe that the West is willing to tolerate Russian transit—this route would be the quickest and most economical way to restore secure Eurasia connectivity.

In the end, the crisis has not just disrupted the old map—it is drawing a new one.