Not only a third of the world's maritime oil exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz — beneath its waters lie seven submarine fiber-optic cables through which over $10 trillion in financial transactions flow daily and approximately 20% of global internet traffic. Tehran has decided it's time to get paid for this.

Three steps to "legitimate enrichment"

The Tasnim agency, considered the official mouthpiece of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published an article titled "Three practical steps to generate income from internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz." In parallel, Fars, another IRGC-linked publication, described Iran as the "ruler of the hidden highway" of the region.

The proposed scheme consists of three elements:

• Initial licensing fees for all foreign companies whose cables pass through the strait;
• Annual "protection payments" from technology giants — Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google;
• Iranian company monopoly on servicing and repairing cables in the strait zone.

Fars formulated the ultimate goal bluntly: to transform Iran's control over Hormuz into a "lever of digital power."

A legal construct with a loophole

Tasnim builds its legal foundation on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS): the agency cites Article 34, arguing that the right of transit passage for vessels does not cancel Iran's sovereign rights over the seabed.

"The risk of intentional submarine cable cutting has always existed, but an open threat from a state, such as Iran, gives the problem new urgency."

Işık Mater, director of research at the London NetBlocks center

The problem is that at the narrowest point of the strait, Iran's and Oman's territorial waters completely overlap — meaning the cables physically lie on the seabed that both countries consider theirs. But the main legal vulnerability is different: Iran signed UNCLOS but never ratified it. The Convention it relies on is formally not binding for Iran. Moreover, experts point out that Tasnim ignores Article 58 of the same UNCLOS, which directly protects the right to lay and maintain submarine cables.

Context: not the first attempt to monetize the strait

The Strait of Hormuz has long been an established instrument of Iranian pressure in negotiations over sanctions and the nuclear issue. Threats to block oil transit have been heard since the 1980s. This time, the IRGC offers the same logic, but applied to digital infrastructure: not physical blockade, but bureaucratic-financial control that is harder to qualify as an act of aggression and harder to challenge in international courts.

It is noteworthy that the publications appeared against the backdrop of reports of a pause in Operation "Project Freedom" — the American initiative to protect vessels in the Persian Gulf — due to progress in negotiations between Washington and Tehran over the nuclear deal.

What's next

For now, these are publications by IRGC-affiliated media, not an official government decree or draft law. But Iran has used the same mechanism — first a media probe, then a regulatory act — when introducing requirements for foreign vessels in the strait. If nuclear negotiations reach an impasse, digital claims to Hormuz will almost certainly become part of official negotiations: the question is whether Google, Meta, and Microsoft will have time to develop a joint position by the moment Tehran moves from Tasnim articles to actual demands.