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Monday, May 11, 2026
[Salon] Underwater cables and the Iran war - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Underwater cables and the Iran war
Summary: with the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea serving as chokepoints in the global internet cabling system the Iran war has underlined a little discussed vulnerability not just for the region but the world.
We thank Paul Cochrane for today’s newsletter. Paul is an independent journalist covering the Middle East and Africa. He writes regularly for Money Laundering Bulletin, Fraud Intelligence, and other specialised titles. Paul lived in Bilad Al Sham (Cyprus, Palestine and Lebanon) for 24 years, mainly in Beirut. He co-directed We Made Every Living Thing from Water, a documentary on the political economy of water in Lebanon.
The US-Israeli war on Iran, and the associated crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, has caused havoc to shipping and logistics over the past few months. Reams of copy have been written on this, but the Strait’s blockage, and the Red Sea crisis, which has boiled on and off since 2023, has also prompted a hard look at IT infrastructure from the security risks associated with the current routes of fibre-optic cables to the attacks on data centres in the Gulf.
The Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, in particular, are major chokepoints in the global internet cabling system, connecting Asia to Europe, the Middle East and East Africa. Over 95% of global internet traffic runs through fibre-optic cables while the route to the Gulf and through the Red Sea and Egypt handles around 30% of global traffic.
Middle East Submarine cable map [photo credit: Telegeography]
So far no cables have been damaged in the Strait, but Iran has warned that cables could be targeted. Indeed they could be and such a move would impact Iran’s allies and enemies alike, although having imposed a nationwide internet blackout since the conflict began Iran itself would be less impacted, .
Such a move would require cutting three major cables, which is a difficult undertaking as cables are deep under the sea, move around and are small – a fibre optic cable is roughly the size of a hosepipe. Furthermore, all the cables were laid in Omani waters – not Iranian waters – to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
The cables that do go through the Strait are subsidiaries of larger cables that run from the Indian subcontinent across the Indian Ocean to split off around 1,400 kilometres from the Strait, in the area the US Navy is patrolling, while major landing stations to and from Asia are in Oman. There are however a number of inter-Gulf submarine cables, which could be targeted. But even if such cables are cut, and the major ones through the Strait, the Gulf would not lose all its connectivity. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar have terrestrial network connections to Saudi Arabia, the UAE has submarine cables landing in Fujairah, outside of the Strait, and Saudi Arabia’s connectivity is primarily through the Red Sea coast.
Fibre optic cables on display at at industry event Submarine Networks in London 2024 [photo credit: Paul Cochrane]
The biggest risk is considered to come from the roughly 1,500 vessels bobbing around the Strait, via the ripping of a cable by an anchor, as happen unintentionally in 2024, when a ship the Huthis had incapacitated dragged its anchor for days cutting through three of the 15 cables that run through the Red Sea before sinking.
Given such factors, the threat to internet cables and connectivity is in no way comparable to the Strait’s maritime closure and impact on global trade. But just as the conflict has upended energy exports from the Gulf, forcing Saudi Arabia to re-open an oil pipeline from the East to Yanbu on the Red Sea, so are cable routes being redrawn.
Prior to the Israeli and US onslaught on the region, and the push back from the Huthis and the Iranians, the industry was seeking alternatives to the bottleneck through the Red Sea and Egypt’s stranglehold over traffic across its territory to the Mediterranean, with Telecom Egypt able to charge above market rates. New cables were proposed, including Google’s Blue-Ramen, and more notably the Trans Europe Asia System (TEAS) cable, which would terrestrially cross Saudi Arabia to Israel and beyond. This was contingent however on Riyadh signing up to the Abraham Accords, which now seems increasingly unlikely.
Saudi Arabia’s plans to be a major fibre-optic cable conduit has now shifted to routing a cable through Syria onto Greece instead of via Israel. This will be good news for Syria, bolstering latency and to neighbouring Lebanon, ensuring better connectivity (I recall when the primary cable that connected Lebanon, from Egypt, was severed in 2012, causing a three day internet blackout - the only other cable is to Cyprus).
To prevent such blackouts in our hyper-connected world, the necessity of terrestrial cables has come to the fore. It is more expensive to lay cables terrestrially than by sea and is open to risks of being dug up and cut, but it adds to securitising the internet, which has become more of a buzzword in national security circles. For it is not just the threat of cables being cut, or accidentally ripped by an anchor that has people concerned. A major problem with the Red Sea cable cuts was the delay in getting them repaired – it took six months. This is due to the dangers of operating in the Red Sea, from insurance issues to security risks, but more so to the lack of repair ships worldwide; just one is currently positioned in the Gulf region.
Alternatives to maritime cables has therefore taken on greater importance for Riyadh and other parties. For the same reason, the UAE is planning new routes through Iraq to Türkiye while a land route from East to West Africa to bypass the Red Sea chokepoint is being considered.
Whether by sea or land cables, like oil pipelines, are expensive ventures for consortia and investors, with cables expected to be operational for decades. The Middle East’s volatility raises question marks over such long-term investments, given the risks. This has been further evidenced in the Iranian attacks on Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in the UAE and Bahrain. Such centres are expensive ‘sitting ducks’ for drone attacks. Repairs are expected to take several months. The viability of the larger data centres in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the GCC that were announced some years ago are in jeopardy, with small scale data centres now considered more viable.
Such concerns could scupper Saudi Arabia’s more grandiose ambitions for IT infrastructure, being potentially forced to downsize, just like The Line has been scaled back from 170 kilometres to 2.4 km.
We will however have to await the fallout on fibre-optic cables, data centres and the like once the conflict ends, and how the region reconsiders its place, and is considered, in the world.
Sunday, May 10, 2026
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Friday, May 8, 2026
[Salon] Understanding Itamar Ben-Gvir - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Understanding Itamar Ben-Gvir
Summary: Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security minister is a politician who revels in violent, racist language whilst pursuing a messianic vision of a greater Israel, one from which the Palestinians have been erased.
The war against Iran has served as useful cover for Itamar Ben-Gvir’s drive to achieve his vision of Israel as a theocratic powerhouse. With ongoing attacks in Lebanon and the creation of ‘buffer zones’ in South Lebanon and Southwest Syria the IDF serves his purposes well. Settler violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 28 February has accelerated unchecked by the authorities. In Gaza the line of separation between the occupying IDF and Gaza survivors of the genocide has been further shrunk.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done much to facilitate and enable Ben-Gvir largely because the alliance his Likud party has with Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party and other extremist groupings in the Knesset has enabled the prime minister to avoid appearing in court on fraud and corruption charges.
Ben-Gvir recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday with a cake presented to him by his wife decorated with a noose. It was deliberate and calculated provocation something that, like Donald Trump, the minister excels at. The noose was tribute to a bill that he had shepherded through the Knesset which received final assent on 30 March. It allows the execution by hanging of those convicted of deadly attacks deemed to be motivated by terrorism i.e. Palestinians while exempting Jewish terrorists from a similar fate. The last time the death penalty was used in Israel was in 1962 when Adolf Eichmann was hanged.
Genocidal ethnosupremacist Itamar Ben-Gvir’s wife gifted him a birthday cake featuring a noose symbol, in reference to the law allowing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. The cake carried the message: “Happy birthday Minister Ben-Gvir, sometimes dreams come true.”
Amnesty International in condemning the bill notes the following:
In the West Bank – excluding East Jerusalem – the law imposes the death penalty as the default sentence for those convicted of intentional killings classified as acts of terrorism under Israeli legislation, allowing life imprisonment – and life imprisonment only – in “special circumstances” that are not specified in law. Military courts may impose capital punishment by a simple majority, even without a prosecutorial request. Sentences cannot be commuted or pardoned and must be carried out within 90 days. Notably, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are explicitly excluded from the scope of this provision.
Within Israel, civilian courts may impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for intentional killings, if they are committed with the aim of “negating the existence of the State of Israel.”
Therefore, while the law does not explicitly reference ethnicity or nationality, it is effectively designed to target Palestinians exclusively. It also introduces an exceptional execution regime by hanging, characterised by secrecy, and limited access to legal counsel and external oversight.
In the Knesset Ben-Gvir was exultant: “From today, every terrorist will know, and the whole world will know, that whoever takes a life, the state of Israel will take their life.” This from a man who celebrates the murder of Palestinians and denounces the extremely rare efforts to prosecute their killers no matter how half-hearted and limited those efforts are.
A recent article by the anti-Semitism and racism scholar Neil Bar for the online magazine Hazman Hazeh (These Times) sheds much light on what has propelled Ben-Gvir to stand on the threshold of becoming arguably the most powerful and successful politician in modern Israeli times, an ailing Benjamin Netanyahu notwithstanding.
Bar explores the backdrop to Ben-Gvir’s ideology of Arab hate. It is rooted in the teachings of the extremist preacher Meir Kahane. The Kahanist movement is known most prominently for the 1994 massacre of Palestinians by Baruch Goldstein. Less well understood is what drives the movement and Ben-Gvir. It is what Bar calls Kahane’s rejection of Western values and norms:
Beyond violence, Kahane offered a whole worldview that posed a fundamental question: Who is the real enemy of the Jewish people? For Kahane, the answer was clear: not the Iranians or even the Palestinians, but rather the very Jewish aspiration to identify with and imitate the culture of the Gentiles, especially the West.
For Kahane the purity of Judaism was polluted by filthy Western values: "The problem of Western influence is not only in the secular public, but also in the religious public. […] These people are infected with the disease of Satanism – a little bit of Judaism and a little bit of Western culture.”
Kahane warned against allies who stand in the way of the Jewish people finding redemption in God: "As long as we have 'friends,' the Messiah will not come, because as long as we have a 'friend,' the people of Israel will not hang their love on it.”
Ben-Gvir, Bar argues, embraces the concept of Israel standing alone, a modern Sparta that rejects liberal democratic values: “In Ben-Gvir’s view, diplomatic advice is something to be despised, international condemnation is a sign of honor, and initiating provocations and boycotts is something to be proud of.”
Thus in response to sanctions being imposed on him and his Knesset ally Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich by several western countries including the UK, Ben-Gvir seized upon the action as evidence that the world is against Israel. The sanctions enable Ben-Gvir to claim that "the Gentiles hate us, and therefore we must not take them into account." Bar writes:
This is the logic of reinforcement through rejection: the further the West moves away, the purer Israel becomes, the more true to itself. The sanctions become medals of honor, proof that the minister did not succumb to Western pressure but spoke the “truth,” contrary to all his critics.
The irony that this new Sparta can stand alone only with the armaments supplied by America appears lost on Ben-Gvir. Still the threat his ideology poses to Israel and to the Levant should not be underestimated. Increasingly writes Bar young Israelis find his message attractive and compelling:
A generation of Israelis is growing up while senior politicians present the West not as a natural ally but as a source of illegitimate pressure. This generation sees senior ministers absorb European sanctions and respond with pride. The message that is getting through is that perhaps there is no need to be part of the West; perhaps isolation is not only tolerable, but even desirable.
An Israel armed to the teeth by America, standing as Sparta in the Middle East, driven by a messianic and fascistic ideology with Itamar Ben-Gvir as its leader is as dangerous and as lethal to the world as it has already become for Palestine and its people.
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Monday, May 4, 2026
Sunday, May 3, 2026
Saturday, May 2, 2026
[Salon] The Emiratis, OPEC and peak oil - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
The Emiratis, OPEC and peak oil
Summary: by quitting OPEC, the UAE has stolen a march on its neighbours in responding to the high probability that the third Gulf war has brought forward ‘peak oil’. The cartel will almost certainly survive the Emiratis’ departure for now but it is surely in permanent decline.
We thank our regular contributor Alastair Newton for today’s newsletter. Alastair worked as a professional political analyst in the City of London from 2005 to 2015. Before that he spent 20 years as a career diplomat with the British Diplomatic Service. In 2015 he co-founded and is a director of Alavan Business Advisory Ltd. You can find Alastair’s latest AD podcast (with Jim Krane) here.
…divisions [in Opec] will become even clearer as the shift towards a greener economy accelerates. Opec’s latest tiff won’t be its last.
The Economist, 8 July 2021
The UAE’s seemingly sudden decision earlier this week to quit OPEC with effect from 1 May has spawned a whole industry of speculation among the commentariat over the ‘why?’ — up to and including the idea that the US has effectively ‘bought’ the Emiratis out by all but agreeing to their request for a swap line. (Couple the fact that the UAE holds billions in US Treasuries and had Forex reserves in excess of US$250bn with its mulling publicly about pricing some oil in yuan and it becomes clear that, if anyone is playing anyone, Abu Dhabi, wisely seeking a safety net in these straitened times, is playing Washington.) In reality, the simple explanation is the correct one, i.e. although the war in the Gulf has played a key part in determining timing, far from being sudden the UAE has done what it has been threatening to do for years over its desire to get as much of its oil out of the ground and to market as possible before the oil age ends.
It is at least as long ago as 2021 that the Emiratis signalled that their remaining an OPEC member was dependent upon them being allowed to boost their oil production majorly, as I wrote in the 12 July 2021 Newsletter which also referenced the quote above. This was followed by more UAE brinkmanship a couple of years later, the subject of our 14 June 2023 podcast and the 11 July 2023 Newsletter. As I wrote in the latter, Riyadh’s efforts to keep the UAE in the fold amounted to “papering over the cracks” and would most likely result in “no more than a temporary reprieve.” This remained the case until this week, contributing significantly to the continuing decline in Saudi/UAE relations.
The UAE’s decision to exit OPEC stems from a long-standing desire to maximize oil production and revenue before the global transition to green energy permanently devalues its reserves.
As has been widely reported in the press, differences of view within the GCC over how to respond to the war have further soured relations. A 16 April essay by the Carnegie Endowment’s Andrew Leber and Sam Worby laid out three scenarios for the Gulf states after the Iran war. At that time the authors favoured something close to the status quo, their second, as the most likely. I suspect that if they were writing today they would opt instead for their third — and “cautionary” — scenario in which…
…fractures might emerge along three lines: pre-existing economic competition, divergent assessments of Israel, or differing calculations on accommodating US versus Iranian demands.
Acknowledging all three of their ‘lines’ as valid, we should be in no doubt that by far the most important is economic — both short and long-term.
In the short-term, although not as badly affected as Qatar (let alone Iran), the UAE faces a sizeable bill for making good war damage to oil-related and other infrastructure — with the cost to the region as a whole now being put as high as US$58bn by Rystad Energy. To Abu Dhabi’s share of these costs, we can reasonably add the following:
Accelerating the already planned expansion of oil output to reach five million barrels per day next year (with, I think, more to follow);
A major upgrade of the Fujairah pipeline and terminals, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz;
Significant additional defence-related expenditure; and
A possible economic bail-out of Dubai which could go beyond the US$10bn stumped up by Abu Dhabi in 2009.
In the longer-term, the UAE (in common with its Gulf neighbours) now has two major challenges staring it in the face.
First, despite proposals for multiple new pipelines to neutralise the Strait of Hormuz as a choke point, the war has raised serious questions over the reliability of the Gulf region as a source of hydrocarbons. In consequence, net energy consuming countries are already turning elsewhere for oil and gas as the recent sharp rise in tankers heading to the United States highlights. Outside OPEC, Abu Dhabi can look to counter this to an extent at least by offering discounts on its oil which, with a balanced budget price for Brent crude estimated at US$55 per barrel (pb), it can reasonably afford — and especially if it can get more oil to market. It is not at all clear what, if anything, Riyadh would be able to do to prevent this; and, with their balanced budget price at around US$90pb, the Saudis could not reasonably accommodate oil at anything close to this level for a protracted period, their recent (ongoing?) attempted — and now seemingly futile — ‘squeeze’ of the US shale sector notwithstanding.
Second, and much more profound in its implications, there is the probability that the war has brought forward ‘peak oil’. Indeed, the writing is already on the wall. According to energy think tank Ember, China’s already impressive exports of solar technology doubled in March, with batteries and electric vehicles also hitting record highs. To date, the biggest market growth has been in African and Asian emerging markets, i.e, the hardest hit by the energy crisis. However, developed economies are looking to accelerate their move away from hydrocarbons too. As the United Kingdom’s energy minister Ed Miliband asserted earlier this week:
As we face the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years, the lesson for our country is clear: the era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age.
Granted that the UAE still faces daunting challenges, by quitting OPEC it has strengthened its hand in addressing them. As for whether it has weakened the cartel, it has! But more important still is the fact that the war has further eroded OPEC’s already declining leverage, making being the first to find the exit, as the UAE has done, all the more imperative.
Friday, May 1, 2026
Thursday, April 30, 2026
[Salon] Iraq moves forward on naming a prime minister - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Iraq moves forward on naming a prime minister
Summary: months after parliamentary elections Iraq appears to have finally resolved who will be the country’s next prime minister.
We thank Winthrop Rodgers for today’s newsletter. A journalist and analyst who spent several years in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, he focuses on politics, human rights and economics and is an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. @wrodgers2
Iraq’s Shia Coordination Framework (SCF) has nominated a new prime minister after more than five months of delay and multiple rounds of difficult negotiations. On April 27, the SCF announced that it had tapped businessman Ali al-Zaidi, who has never held high government or partisan office, as its choice. The decision was greeted positively across the political spectrum, mostly in relief that a decision had been taken and the process of government formation can now quickly resolve itself. There were worries that the US may object to the SCF’s choice, but Washington has signalled its acceptance.
Zaidi is primarily known an owner of al-Janoob Islamic Bank. Notably, it was banned from participating in US dollar auctions by the Central Bank of Iraq in February 2024 along with seven other financial institutions as part of crackdown on Iraqi banks smuggling US dollars to Iran. Beyond that, his business portfolio includes Taawon Hypermarkets. He is also the CEO of Dijlah TV, one of Iraq’s largest television channels, and is chairman on the board of a private university. He once held a minor position in the Ministry of Trade involving the ration card system.
As a result, Zaidi carries little of the political experience of other candidates who had been floated for the position. By contrast, current Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani had held numerous governorate-level and ministerial posts before he was nominated. It also means that Zaidi carries little of the political baggage of other potential prime ministerial nominees.
The Iraq Shia Coordination Framework has nominated businessman Ali al-Zaidi as the new prime minister, a choice seen as a move to break a five-month deadlock with a politically inexperienced candidate who won't overshadow established party leaders.
For example, the Trump administration dramatically declared on January 27 that it would not support State of Law leader Nouri al-Maliki, who had been the SCF’s first choice. Washington viewed the former two-term prime minister as too close to Iran, a determination that was made before the current war began a month later. Since then, the SCF has vacillated over its strategy, veering between a defiant stance of sticking by Maliki, renominating Sudani or searching for a new candidate entirely. In the end, they opted for the third route.
Zaidi’s nomination is an extreme version of the approach that the Shia bloc has taken since Maliki left office in 2014. Every prime minister since then has been plucked from relative obscurity, rather than being one of the country’s top politicians. This maintains balance between the various parties within the SCF by not raising any one above the others, but it also allows the party leaders to manage up and exert control over the prime minister. Of course, each of the prime ministers has tried to expand their power base once in office, but with limited success. As a non-politician, Zaidi fits in this model and will be extremely unlikely to overshadow the power of party leaders.
However, one big winner from the nomination seems to be Faiq Zaidan, president of the Supreme Judicial Council, who has progressively become more influential in Iraqi politics in recent years and is said to be close to Zaidi. The judge’s position provides him with decisive power to weigh in on political disputes, while also being an influential backroom player. However, there are some accusations that Zaidan personally benefitted from Zaidi’s legal and corrupt business activities.
Zaidi’s selection was welcomed by figures across the political spectrum, including non-Shia blocs. Speaker of Parliament Haibet al-Halbousi, who is Sunni, praised the pick in a statement. In the Kurdistan Region, the leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) — who cannot seem to agree on the colour of the sky these days — both congratulated Zaidi. However, since the Sunni or Kurdish blocs are not responsible for selecting the prime minster, there was probably not much to be gained from actively opposing the Shia pick.
Initially, the choice raised questions among analysts about whether this is a serious pick or whether it is merely a play for time. Abu Mithaq al-Masari, an Iraqi political observer, suggested in a Facebook post that Zaidi may be a “burnt card,” who is offered up while negotiations continue in the background to select a real candidate who will subsequently attempt to form a government. This however seems unlikely given that President Nizar Amedi has officially asked him to move forward with naming a cabinet and Zaidi’s acceptance by the other blocs.
Another major question was whether Zaidi will win approval from the Trump administration. The fact that his bank was banned from the US dollar auction seemed at first blush to be automatically disqualifying, given the criteria applied to Maliki. However, pressure had been growing both domestically and from foreign partners like Washington to complete the government formation process in the interests of stability.
In this end, the US Embassy in Baghdad posted on social media on April 29 that it “extends its best wishes to Prime Minister-Designate Ali al-Zaidi as he works to form a government capable of fulfilling the hopes of all Iraqis for a brighter and more peaceful future.” Its close allies also signalled approval. UK Ambassador to Iraq Irfan Siddiq wrote on social media that London “welcomes the nomination of a new Prime Minister in Iraq” and wished Zaidi “success in swiftly forming a new government.” French Ambassador Patrick Durel similarly congratulated the prime minister designate.
Iraq is experiencing a substantial security and economic crisis as a result of the war between its two main allies, the US and Iran. Facing it without a permanent government would be foolish. In that sense, Zaidi’s nomination is a positive step forward. Still, his ability to run a government is entirely untested and is therefore a major risk. Matters are rarely clear or predictable when it comes to Iraqi politics and this unusual choice only reinforces that tendency.
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