Six competing projects backed by Gulf nations are racing to build overland data routes to Europe through Syria, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa, aiming to give the region an alternative if the subsea cables it depends on are damaged.
The scramble has accelerated since Iran’s retaliatory strikes hit Amazon facilities in the Gulf and threatened both choke points through which virtually all the region’s data traffic flows. Saudi Arabia spent decades building the East-West pipeline and the United Arab Emirates built the Habshan-Fujairah route so that crude oil could reach global markets without passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Digital connectivity never got the same treatment. Now Gulf states are trying to replicate that feat for data in months.
The projects were conceived independently by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, which were divided until 2021 by a Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. The same divisions will determine whether any of the alternatives are built fast enough to matter, analysts say.
“The race to build overland corridors has reflected an element of competition for influence rather than an alignment of effort,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told Rest of World. “The prospect of prolonged and expanded military conflict in the region means that plans may be paused or reassessed.”
No major fiber-optic route has ever connected the Gulf to Europe by land. Building through Iraq or Iran was considered too dangerous for decades, and submarine cables were cheaper to lay, attracted more customers, and drove prices lower, reinforcing the pattern that sent virtually all traffic underwater through the Red Sea and overland across Egypt, according to Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik.
“I suspect not all of those cables will actually be constructed,” Madory told Rest of World.
The most advanced of the new projects is SilkLink. Saudi Arabia’s STC Group signed an $800 million contract on February 7 to build 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) of fiber across Syria to a submarine cable landing station at Tartus on the Mediterranean, with connections to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The first phase is expected to start within 18 to 24 months.
The project replaces an earlier plan that collapsed when the politics around it changed. The East-to-Med corridor, a venture between STC and Greece’s PPC, was announced in 2022 to run through Israel at a time when Saudi-Israeli normalization appeared within reach. The Gaza war ended those talks, and Saudi Arabia pivoted to a Syrian route through Damascus.
Not all of those cables will actually be constructed.”
SilkLink’s route through Syria has been tried before. A system called JADI ran from Jeddah through Amman, Damascus, and Istanbul, following the same geography that SilkLink now proposes to revive, according to Madory, who documented the route.
Months after JADI was activated, Syria descended into civil war and the fighting severed the link, Madory wrote in a Kentik analysis. It was never reconstituted. A second overland attempt through EPEG, a terrestrial circuit running from Frankfurt through Iran to Oman, was made in 2013 but never reduced the region’s dependence on Egypt. The line was recently severed by fighting connected to the war in Ukraine.
Qatar’s Ooredoo is building a second corridor, through Iraq. In January 2025, the company announced a 720-Tbps subsea cable called Fibre in Gulf, or FiG. It connects all GCC states plus Iraq, and is expected to be ready in late 2027. Ooredoo has separately committed $500 million to overland routes from Iraq through Turkey to Europe. Iraq is a vital transit hub for traffic between Asia and Europe, the country’s communications minister has said.
Ooredoo and STC, backers of competing corridors through Iraq and Syria, jointly announced a project called SONIC in February 2025. This is a terrestrial fiber link between Saudi Arabia and Oman designed to connect submarine cable landing stations across both countries, with the first phase expected within 12 months.
A third corridor through Iraq called WorldLink was announced in February by a privately funded consortium of Iraq’s Tech 964, UAE-based Breeze Investments, and Iraq-Kurdish DIL Technologies. The $700 million hybrid cable would run from the UAE to Iraq’s Al-Faw Peninsula, and overland through Iraq and Kurdistan to Turkey. It has a five-year timeline but no named construction contractor. The consortium has said the cable would target hyperscalers, international carriers, and AI applications.
Whether the projects deliver will depend on whether the Gulf states financing them can work together, Ali Bakir, an assistant professor of international affairs at Qatar University, told Rest of World.
“The alternatives are not comprehensive, took a lot of time and investment, and are not fully realized,” Bakir said. “Competition is healthy as long as it occurs within established rules and is translated into benefits to customers.”
Beyond the Gulf, Ethiopia’s Ethio Telecom, Djibouti Telecom, and Sudan’s Sudatel Group agreed in February to build a terrestrial fiber corridor called Horizon from Djibouti through Ethiopia to Sudan, routing traffic overland through East Africa and avoiding the Red Sea entirely. Zain Omantel International, a venture between Kuwait’s Zain and Oman’s state-backed Omantel, is building a separate corridor from Oman through Saudi Arabia to Egypt and the Mediterranean.
“Who is allowed to buy and operate fiber pairs and what is the price?”
The fallback, should Red Sea cables be damaged, remains stark. The specialized ships that fix submarine cables number roughly 60 worldwide, and none can safely reach either choke point while the war continues. When three Red Sea cables were severed in 2024, repairs took up to five months. Networks could redirect traffic through a terrestrial route to Istanbul and onward into Europe, or around the entire coast of Africa.
All three front-runner corridors converge on Turkey as the gateway to Europe, but whether traffic actually stops at Istanbul’s exchanges or transits through to Bulgaria or Germany depends on what content is available there. That is a commercial question that remains unsettled, said Bülent Şen, regional director for the Middle East at Frankfurt-based DE-CIX. The world’s largest internet exchange operator announced on Monday a strengthened partnership with Bulgaria’s BIX.BG exchange in Sofia, positioning the Balkan hub as the next step for traffic leaving Istanbul.
The obstacles ahead may be as much about regulation as about fiber. “Who is allowed to buy and operate fiber pairs that traverse a country and what is the price?” is the question that matters most, Alan Mauldin, research director at Washington-based telecom research firm TeleGeography, told Rest of World.
The corridors being planned as escape routes from the Gulf’s geographic trap would themselves pass through Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Ethiopia, countries where conflict or institutional fragility has severed infrastructure before. Whether something similar happens in the Gulf depends on how companies read the risk.“The question is whether tech and other sectors will approach the region through the ‘Ukraine lens’ and rapidly decouple from the hot zone,” Abishur Prakash, a Toronto-based geopolitical strategist, told Rest of World. “Or whether they are willing to operate in the fires.”
