February 1, 2008
Zawya Dow Jones

Third Middle East Undersea Cable Cut

by Tahani Karrar

A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official.

Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged Wednesday leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia.

"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones.

The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.

"It may take sometime to fix the cut but we are rerouting the traffic to another cable in the U.K. and U.S., the bandwidth utilization will go down," the official said.

There are conflicting reports of how the two Alexandria cables were cut. . . .

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[According to the Internet Traffic Report, the router located in Iran - router1.iust.ac. ir - is out of commission.]

"U.S. Attacks Foreign Websites," The Wisdom Fund, September 9, 1999

Kevin Maguire and Andy Lines, "Bush's Plot to Bomb Al-Jazeera," Daily Mirror, November 23, 2005

[The long-awaited Iranian Oil Bourse, a place for trading oil, petrochemicals and gas in various non-dollar currencies, will soon open.

Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari told reporters the bourse will be inaugurated during the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1-11) at the latest.--MK/JG/RE/HAR, "Iran Oil Bourse to deal blow to dollar," Iran Press TV, January 4, 2008]

Richard Sauder, "Middle East Undersea Cable Cutting A Zionist-NeoCon Covert Operation?," rense.com, February 2, 2008

"Ships did not cause Internet cable damage," khaleejtimes.com, February 3, 2008

Mike Whitney, "Fragile Dollar Hegemony: Iran's Oil Bourse could Topple the Dollar," Global Research, February 4, 2008

"Iran opens first oil products bourse," Economic Times, February 17, 2008

"Iran stops conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars," Associated Press, April 30, 2008

Mark Clayton, "Stuxnet malware is 'weapon' out to destroy ... Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant?," csmonitor.com, September 21, 2010

[The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy "shadow" Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.--James Glanz and John Markoff, "U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors," nytimes.com, June 12, 2011]