USA behind fibre cut:To target IRAN economy

Ships did not cause Internet cable damage

3 February 2008

CAIRO - Damage to undersea Internet cables in the Mediterranean that hit business across the Middle East and South Asia was not caused by ships, Egypt’s communications ministry said on Sunday, ruling out earlier reports.

The transport ministry added that footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

‘The ministry’s maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area,’ a statement said.

‘The area is also marked on maps as a no-go zone and it is therefore ruled out that the damage to the cables was caused by ships,’ the statement added.

Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.

A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said.

Earlier reports said that the damage had been caused by ships that had been diverted off their usual route because of bad weather.

Egypt’s communication and information technology ministry said it would report its findings to the owners of the two damaged Mediterranean cables, FLAG Telecom and SEA-ME-WE4.

A repair ship was expected to begin work to fix the two Mediterranean cables on Tuesday.

Three Internet Cables Slashed in a Week: Has Iran lost all Internet Connectivity?

by Mike Whitney

February 3, 2008

CNN reports that: “An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, THE THIRD LOSS of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days.

The first two cables “account for as much as three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East”, so it is expected that the loss of the third cable will plunge large parts of the Middle East into darkness.

According to Mathaba Net, the latest incident took place “two days after the cable cut which "cut off Iran" and affected the rest of the Middle East and West Asia. Internet Traffic Report web site reports that Iran has lost all Internet connectivity. (http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm)

Israel and Iraq's Internet connections are still “intact”. (Mathaba.net http://mathaba.net/news/?x=580589)

“Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai's Internet Service Provider "DU", said that the incident was "very unusual” and that the cause of the incident "had not yet been identified."

From Mathaba News:

“The only 2 countries that were unaffected were Israel and Iraq, the only two close Anglo-American allies in the region, both remaining completely unaffected by the cable cuts, leading to theories for the causes of the cuts, which have so far been given as having been caused by ships dragging their anchors across the cables. The fact that two rare incidents have happened in the same week, and both with cables owned by the same company, on either sides of Israel and the importance of the Internet to telecommunications and business, lends suspicion to the events.” (Mathaba.net http://mathaba.net/news/?x=580589)

Coincidence or Network Warfare?

Recently, a document entitled Information Operation Roadmap was declassified by the Pentagon because of a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

The importance of information warfare is clearly laid out in this document. Here is an extended excerpt from an article by Brent Jessop, “Full Spectrum Information Warfare” published by Global Research:

“Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future..... Information operations should be centralized under the Office of the Secretary of Defence and made a core military competency.

"Objective: IO [information operations] becomes a core competency. The importance of dominating the information spectrum explains the objective of transforming IO into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime and special operations. The charge to the IO Roadmap oversight panel was to develop as concrete a set of action recommendations as possible to make IO a core competency, which in turn required identifying the essential prerequisites to become a core military competency."[/b]

Undersea internet cable cut in Middle East – Should Iran be worried?

There has been some concern that the undersea internet cables, that have been cut recently, are perhaps no accident?

The first incident happened 8km from Alexandria in Egypt, which involved 2 cables apparently alongside each other. According to initial reports, the cables may have been "snapped" by a ship´s anchor.

Whilst this explanation is certainly a possibility, it seems a strange coincidence that barely two days later another cable is cut, this time 56km from Dubai in the Persian Gulf. There is even rumor of a fourth cable being damaged, but this has not been confirmed.

The countries most affected by the damaged cables are Egypt, India and the Middle East (in particular Iran). Israel and Iraq, as far as we can tell, were not affected by this problem as they use an alternative route for this service.

Cables involved in the "breaks" belong to companies connected to Reliance Communication Ventures, where Anil Ambani has a 66.75% interest. His father (Dhirubhai Ambani) originally founded the company and it is a classical rags to riches story.

Hypnosis Downloads can help you in so many ways. Dhirubhai Ambani started with absolutely nothing, but developed a company that was a huge success. Questions were raised about how Dhirubhai managed to raise so much cash to do this, and this appears to be the result of a "Non-Resident Indian" investing Rs. 220 million in Reliance during 1982-1983. Dhirubhai has been accused of "manipulating" government policies and was known to be a "king-maker" in government elections (enjoying a certain amount of media protection). He was also involved in other business interests, including the oil industry.

Following Dhirubhai´s death in 2002, the company was split between the Ambani brothers, with the youngest (Anil Ambani) taking control of Reliance. Anil, born June 4 1959, is the 6th richest person in the world (worth $45 billion).

On the assumption that the cables cut were no accident, we must ask ourselves who would do such a thing and why. Clearly Iran, who were most affected, would gain nothing from such an action and are perhaps the target of those responsible?

But why would anyone want to disrupt communications in Iran (and other countries)? Could this be some subtle message to Iran, an example of how their communications can be affected by outside forces? Maybe this is a prelude to an attack, or perhaps a test run for a future one?

Communication has always been an important factor in military action, and cutting these cables might affect Iran´s ability to defend itself. But even if that were not the case, it would certainly make it difficult for them to report any events to the outside world. So, if they were attacked, we would have to rely on news reports from the usual sources (the Mainstream Media), and we all know where their loyalties lie.

Oddly enough, Russia also experienced some "internet problems" during this same period, but that may be another coincidence?

Bl***dy americans...............

wtf r they doing..........

i think they used high power lasers from space to cut those fiber cables..........

and out of 3 cables 2 are from india owned by Flag telecom(Reliance telecom:Dhirubhai group)

and flag telecom has 30000 km of fiber optical network..

coz of them india got disconnected from UK and west.........

luckily india has another bigger fiber optical cable linking chennai with singapore..........

and initially they cut 2 cables one each from flag telecom and other is South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) which is consortium of 16 telecom companies...

and now yesterday another flag telecom cable is cut which connects UAE with gulf including iran

wtf USA want???

why is it hitting indian companies???

and we have also lost about 10% connectivity...its another point that india is connected to singapore by chennai by another flag cable.......

No ships present when internet cable cut, says Egypt communication ministry

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - No ships were present when two marine cables carrying much of the Middle East's internet traffic were severed, announced Egypt's Ministry of Communications Sunday, contrary to earlier speculation about the causes of the cut.
The ministry had originally stated that a ship dropping its anchor on the two key cables was
most likely responsible for Wednesday's cut in service that robbed Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India of much of their internet.
«A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time,» said the statement.
The ministry added that the location, 8.3 kilometers (5 miles) from the port of Alexandria, was in a restricted area so ships would not have been allowed there to begin with.
Internet connectivity in Egypt had now reached 70-80 percent of its previous rate due to reroute connections through alternate cables in the Far East and to Italy, added the statement.
Two ships sailed France and Italy at the request of cable owners Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) and the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) and will begin repairs Tuesday which are expected to take several days.
The ministry estimated that full service in Egypt would not be restored for another ten days.