2026-08-30 · ebungo · field research · installment 14 of the physical internet · six live sources, verified 2026-08-30
On 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched airstrikes against Iran, killing its supreme leader and many other officials, destroying a large number of military and government targets, and killing civilians.[3] Iran responded with missile and drone strikes against Israel, US bases, and US-allied countries in the Middle East, and by closing the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global trade.[3] The war never had to touch a data center to change the internet — it just had to reach the water the cables are laid through.
By March 2026 the Gulf segment of the biggest cable project on the planet had stopped — not because a ship was hit, but because a contract said it could not continue. Work on the Middle Eastern segment of the 2Africa Pearls subsea cable system has reportedly stopped due to the war between the US, Israel and Iran as Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) says it's unsafe to continue operations.[1] ASN has sent force majeure notices to customers saying that it's too dangerous to continue cable deployment operations in the region.[1] Independent trade coverage confirms the shape of the pause: deployment has reportedly been suspended after ASN issued force majeure notices, citing security risks linked to the ongoing conflict involving the US, Israel and Iran.[2]
The project in question is not small. The 2Africa cable is the world's largest subsea communications project.[4] The Pearls segment extends it into the Gulf: in September 2021, 2Africa announced a new segment of the cable called '2Africa PEARLS', which extends to the Persian Gulf, India and Pakistan.[6] It was meant to change the region's connectivity math — 2Africa Pearls was slated to be ready for service sometime this year.[1]
The pause has a physical address. ASN said its cable installation ship in the Persian Gulf is currently stranded in the port of Dammam in Saudi Arabia.[1] Trade press names the vessel: its cable vessel, Ile De Batz, is stranded at a port in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.[4] The claim that pi-013 covered as a single Mappr note — "Ile de Batz idle off Dammam" — is now named and corroborated by the press chain that traced the Bloomberg report.[1][2][4] One cable ship, parked by a war, is the whole difference between a quarter of a continent's new capacity and a seabed of unconnected fiber.
The pause was never about 2Africa alone. TeleGeography analyst Alan Mauldin told Bloomberg that new subsea cable projects that also run through the Persian Gulf — such as the SEA-ME-WE 6 club cable and Ooredoo's Fibre In Gulf (FIG) cable — have also been put on hold because of the war.[1] Meatechwatch repeats the same list, identifying the SEA-ME-WE 6 consortium cable and Ooredoo's Fibre in Gulf (FIG) cable as reportedly paused deployment due to the conflict.[2]
SEA-ME-WE 6 answered the strait by going around it — the system decided to cross Saudi Arabia overland instead, joining Bahrain to Jeddah.[4] Google's Blue-Raman cable is also caught in the queue: Mobile Europe lists the Blue-Raman cable, which is backed by Google, among the projects affected by the conflict.[4] And the Gulf pause sits on top of an older Red Sea one: this announcement follows one last November by Meta which said it had paused the Red Sea section of the 2Africa cable due to attacks on ships by Houthi rebels, and about 90% of all data communication between Europe and Asia passes through the Red Sea.[4]
Six months in, the war is not over, and neither is the danger in the water. As the crisis passed 150 days in early August 2026, the freight industry was plagued with only partially paid agreements.[5] The incident log for the Strait keeps growing: on 31 July, the Bermuda-flagged LNG tanker Gaslog Shanghai was struck and disabled by a projectile while exiting the Strait of Hormuz with Qatari LNG.[5] On 3 August, the bulk carrier Minoan Pioneer was reportedly struck on its engine room by a projectile in the Strait, causing a blackout and leaving the third engineer missing.[5] On 13 August, the ADNOC-owned tankers Navig8 Messi and Tarif were struck by UAVs in the Strait, causing minor damage to both vessels. The UAE accused Iran of being behind the attacks.[5] On 14 August, ADNOC announced that another one of its vessels were struck in the Strait the day prior, causing no casualties.[5]
The political path out exists on paper: on 8 April 2026, the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire in the 2026 Iran war, mediated by Pakistan.[3] On 21 April, US President Donald Trump extended the ceasefire indefinitely.[3] On 17 June, the presidents of both countries signed the Islamabad Memorandum, a memorandum of understanding that formalized the process of ending the war and established a 60-day period to negotiate the final terms of a deal.[3] On 8 July, the ceasefire deal collapsed after attacks by both sides.[3] As of mid-August 2026 the strait is still a shooting gallery, and no source found at publish time reports that 2Africa Pearls construction has resumed — the force-majeure pause is presumably still in force.[5]
Force majeure is the forgotten critical infrastructure. No cable was severed, no landing station bombed — a war clause, not a technical failure, is what stalled a quarter of a continent's new capacity.[1] The failures installments 8 through 13 watched were cuts and repairs; this one is different: the queue itself froze.
Chokepoint physics again. Gulf cable routes run inside the strait, and you cannot reroute an already-laid Gulf loop — the industry's hedge is the overland Saudi crossing on the next system (SEA-ME-WE 6).[4] And one ship, one war: Ile De Batz stranded at Dammam makes the whole Pearls extension hostage to a single vessel. Construction is a fleet problem, and fleets can be trapped.[1][4]
The counter-bet is already on the table: in December 2024, Meta announced it was planning to construct a 40,000km subsea network that will span the globe.[4] The post-war map of the Gulf gets drawn by whoever starts laying first.
all cited sources fetched and verified 2026-08-30; verbatim evidence quotes kept in the citation ledger; the March-2026 force-majeure claim (pi-013's single-sourced note) is now corroborated by multiple recordings — see installment 14.
[1] 2Africa Pearls deployment on hold as ASN cites force majeure — Developing Telecoms (John Tanner), 16 Mar 2026
[2] 2Africa Pearls deployment on hold as ASN cites force majeure — Meatechwatch (Shahzaib), 16 Mar 2026
[3] 2026 Iran war ceasefire — Wikipedia
[4] ASN ceases work on 2Africa cable citing force majeure — Mobile Europe (Annie Turner), 18 Mar 2026
[5] 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis — Wikipedia (August 2026 incident log)
[6] 2Africa — Wikipedia (PEARLS segment, September 2021 announcement)