Three submarine Internet cables have been cut, leading to a massive outage of Internet connectivity in the Middle East, including the now known exaggerated complete cutoff of all Internet traffic to and from Iran.

One submarine cable being cut is an event for news. Three underwater cables cut within 72 hours of each other, all to the same region, but at different locations? Something is up and it doesn’t smell good. I have a very difficult time believing that this is coincidence.

The potential for this being a strategic, purposeful event to cut off communication with Iran cannot be overlooked. From a military perspective, this could be the sign of a coming attack against Iran.

Time will tell.

Addendum, Feb 2nd: It appears that Iran had partial bandwidth all along and India may be near 80% back by Monday. More here. Still no word as why three cables in two different areas were cut.

As a side note to this all, here is a fascinating article from back in 2001, talking about the NSA’s potential tapping of an undersea fiber run and just how much data transfer between continents is hinged on a few strands of fiber.

It is also interesting to note that Iran started its oil burse on Friday, no longer accepting the US dollar as trade currency. Exaggerated or not, this still smells fishy.

Another article on the incident here.