The Numbers Come First
More than 90% of Europe–Asia data and telecommunications traffic currently flows through Egypt and the subsea cable corridors converging at the Red Sea and Suez Canal region. That single chokepoint, exposed by today's geopolitical instability, is now driving a parallel infrastructure race across the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are all moving to build alternative routes. The most ambitious project on the table is Qatari telecom operator Ooredoo's Fibre in the Gulf (FIG) system — on track, according to the company, to be the largest subsea cable system ever built in the GCC.
$500 Million, 2,000 Kilometers, Six Countries
Set for completion in late 2027, the $500 million FIG system will span almost 2,000 kilometers, linking all six GCC states and Iraq while bypassing the Suez Canal and Bab-el-Mandeb strait entirely. For Gulf economies betting heavily on AI and cloud infrastructure, controlling the physical layer of data transmission is no longer a luxury — it is a strategic necessity.
Ooredoo Group CEO Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo told Fortune that the Iran war had 'reinforced the proposition' of FIG. The logic is straightforward: a region that cannot guarantee the security of its data corridors cannot credibly pitch itself as a global AI hub.
Hormuz: The Unresolved Bottleneck
The project is not without its complications. A key section of FIG is routed through the Strait of Hormuz, and Fakhroo acknowledged a concrete operational problem: 'We currently can't get the cable-laying ships inside Hormuz.' That single sentence captures the tension between the Gulf's infrastructure ambitions and the military realities still playing out in the region.
The longer-term question — how the current war and its aftermath will affect the viability of digital highways being built across and beyond the Gulf — remains open.
Separately, Ooredoo has partnered with Nvidia and Nokia to launch a multi-billion-dollar AI compute and neo-cloud platform in Indonesia, diversifying the group's geographic footprint beyond its core Middle Eastern markets into Southeast Asia, where AI adoption is reportedly showing stronger momentum than the global average.
Dubai Crypto Exchange Hit With U.S. Sanctions
Also this week, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Shelbit, a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange, over what it described as a $4 billion scheme used to evade Iranian sanctions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated: 'Treasury will hunt down and dismantle the illicit financial networks that keep the regime afloat.'
The designation followed a Reuters investigation finding that Shelbit moved crypto on behalf of Iran's central bank, one of the world's largest illegal online gambling networks, and to addresses linked by the Israeli government to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority had already issued a notice on July 24 finding Shelbit in violation of anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. Shelbit denied all allegations.
The action follows the UAE's removal from the Financial Action Task Force's grey list in February 2024 — a status that had complicated cross-border transactions for UAE businesses.
CEO Times Read
The Gulf's infrastructure push is a textbook case of what happens when sovereign capital meets a genuine market signal. Geopolitical risk has made data sovereignty a hard commercial asset, and private operators — not government mandates — are writing the checks. The $500 million FIG investment is a bet that clear rules, stable property rights, and access to capital can outrun instability. The Hormuz bottleneck is real, but so is the incentive to solve it. Capital rewards clear rules, and the Gulf is working to provide them.
