India, Oct. 24 -- Iran's threat to cut the undersea cables beneath the Gulf would barely dent the world's internet, but it could slow the region's access to the web, online payments and cloud services for weeks because a broken cable is hard to repair in a war zone.

Two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters on Friday that Tehran has drawn up detailed plans to target the cables if the US and Israel attack Iran again. One of them said Iran would try to stop repairs to prolong the disruption.

The cables crossing the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf's sea link to the Arabian Sea, carry less than 1% of the world's international bandwidth.

Operators can usually send traffic around a single break, but several breaks at once would be far ha...