Iran Threatens Gulf Data Centers: How Exposed Is the Region's Internet?

Iran has warned it could attack the Gulf's digital infrastructure as Tehran-backed Houthi forces control Yemeni territory along the Red Sea coast, raising concerns about the safety of the fiber-optic cables linking Europe and Asia.

According to Al Jazeera, Mohsen Rezaei, a senior Iranian security official, said fiber-optic cables, data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) facilities in the region could become targets if conflict with the United States flares up again. The warning came after the Houthis expanded their control around Bab al-Mandeb, a strait just some 26 km wide at its narrowest point and one of the busiest maritime routes connecting Europe with Asia.

During the earlier US-Israel war with Iran, data centers and US business interests in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were attacked. Tehran said the strikes were retaliation for US attacks on Iranian civilian facilities. Large-scale fighting largely subsided after a June memorandum between Iran and the US, though attacks on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the world's oil chokepoint, have continued.

Why are data centers and fiber cables vulnerable?

The reason is the sheer volume of data that must pass through a few narrow routes. By the estimate of research firm TeleGeography, more than 90 percent of data capacity between Europe and Asia travels through cables under the Red Sea. Cables can be severed by ship anchors or sabotage, and repairs in a war zone require permits and safety guarantees. Data centers — which run banking applications and cloud services — are fixed, large-scale targets.

Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at King's College London, told Al Jazeera that an attack does not necessarily have to destroy servers to cripple an entire facility. Data centers depend on continuous power, cooling systems and telecommunications, while undersea cables are "very hard to protect on a permanent basis and disruption can affect many countries at once."

Has Iran threatened data centers and fiber cables before?

Yes, repeatedly since the fighting began in February. On March 11, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) published a list of "Iran's new targets," including Google, Microsoft and Oracle cloud infrastructure in Israel and several Gulf states. That same month, the IRGC named 17 US companies in a Telegram post, including Google, Meta, Apple and UAE AI firm G42, as potential targets.

Krieg said Rezaei's warning should be taken seriously, but he drew a clear distinction between Iran's ability to cause significant disruption and its ability to "systematically destroy the Gulf's digital infrastructure." What makes the warning notable, he said, is that Iran is not merely adding targets — it is identifying a new class of strategic infrastructure that directly ties the Gulf's economic diversification to American technological power. He described the warning as "essentially a deterrent measure" aimed at Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha and Washington alike, designed to give Gulf governments a reason to prevent a new US attack.

Has tech infrastructure and fiber cable been attacked before?

Yes. In March, Amazon Web Services (AWS) said two facilities in the UAE were "directly attacked" by drones, while a strike near a facility in Bahrain "caused physical impact to infrastructure." Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank said its app was inaccessible because of a region-wide IT outage, though it did not directly attribute the problem to AWS. By September, AWS said it could not restore some services in Bahrain and one in the UAE.

Underwater, three cables were damaged in February 2024, most likely dragged by the anchor of the Rubymar — a cargo ship disabled by a Houthi missile — according to an industry consensus reported by Data Center Dynamics, with repairs taking months. In September 2025, two cables broke near Jeddah, slowing internet access in the Middle East and South Asia; the cause was not confirmed.

Krieg argued that the March attacks "exposed the limits of treating commercial infrastructure as an automatic beneficiary of national air defense." Gulf militaries can intercept most threats, but even a handful of successful strikes is enough to cause disproportionate economic damage, because relatively cheap drones can threaten facilities housing billions of dollars in equipment.

Have the Houthis attacked undersea cables?

They have never been directly blamed, and the group denies causing damage in 2024. However, in mid-September the Houthis seized the port of Mocha and territory around Bab al-Mandeb; on September 11 they advanced to Mayyun island, which divides the strait. On October 5, Yemen's internationally recognized government said it had retaken Mocha and positions near the strait, but the Houthis rejected the claim.

Are there alternatives to the Red Sea route?

Yes, but they cost more and many routes are still being built. On September 10, Iraq signed a contract with Qatar's Ooredoo to transmit data from the Gulf to Europe through Iraqi territory, according to the country's Communications Ministry. Minister Mustafa Jabar Sanad told the Iraqi News Agency that the undersea cable runs from al-Faw to Rabia near the Turkish border. On October 7, Ooredoo's international arm agreed to buy fiber from Iraq's iQ Networks to extend the route toward Turkey, subject to government approval.

Microsoft said in September it would invest more than $400 million in undersea and terrestrial cable connectivity across the Middle East through 2030, according to a blog post. Tech news site Rest of World reported on October 7, citing an unnamed source, that Google and Meta had begun routing some traffic through Iraq; neither company responded to Al Jazeera's request for comment.

Krieg said genuine resilience requires geographic redundancy, "potentially including facilities outside the Gulf." That creates tension between digital sovereignty and operational security, as Gulf governments have invested heavily to keep sensitive data and computing capacity within their borders.

What does it mean for Gulf tech hub ambitions?

Investment is continuing, but the fighting has hurt the industry. Gulf states have staked their post-oil economies on technology. In Abu Dhabi, the UAE's G42 is building Stargate UAE with OpenAI, Nvidia and other partners, part of a planned US-UAE AI campus with 5 gigawatts of capacity. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund launched Humain — an AI company chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — in May 2025 to build data centers and Arabic-language AI models, according to the Saudi Press Agency. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund and US investor Blue Owl joined a $3 billion data center deal in September 2025.

In September, Microsoft said it would invest more than $10 billion in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE through 2030, with a new focus on "digital resilience." But AWS said it had "exhausted every option" to restore some data stored in Bahrain.

Krieg said the threats will not "fundamentally reverse" Gulf ambitions, but will "change the economics and geography of AI investment." The Gulf has long marketed itself as a stable environment in an unstable region, and the fighting has challenged that argument. The UAE is especially exposed because its AI strategy is deeply tied to US tech companies, making its infrastructure "more attractive as a target to Iran"; Qatar, with its diplomatic ties to Tehran, is "in a somewhat better political position."

According to Krieg, in many ways Iran is threatening to do to the Gulf's emerging digital economy what it once did to its maritime economy — turning stability itself into a geopolitical bargaining chip.