Khark Island, Iran

Khark Island, Iran: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Khark Island is a continental island located in the Persian Gulf, approximately 25 kilometres off the coast of Iran and administered under Bushehr Province. As an island territory, its connectivity to submarine cable infrastructure carries particular significance, with undersea links providing the physical layer of telecommunications between the island and the broader regional network. One submarine cable currently lands at Khark Island, connecting Iran directly to Kuwait across the northern Persian Gulf.

The single cable serving Khark Island, the Kuwait-Iran cable, represents a short-haul bilateral link between two Persian Gulf neighbours. This corridor is regional in character, spanning the relatively narrow body of water that separates the Iranian and Kuwaiti coastlines and enabling direct submarine connectivity between the two countries.

Cables Landing at Khark Island

The Kuwait-Iran cable is the sole submarine cable landing at Khark Island. With a length of 380 kilometres, it is a comparatively short system designed to connect Iran and Kuwait across the Persian Gulf. The cable reached ready-for-service status in 2005, though it carries a draft status designation. As its name indicates, the two countries served by this cable are Iran and Kuwait, making it a point-to-point bilateral system linking the two nations.

Regional Context

Among Iran's seven submarine cable landing points, Khark Island hosts one cable, placing it in the middle tier of the country's landing point infrastructure. It sits alongside Bandar Abbas and Ganaveh, which each also serve a single cable, while landing points such as Chabahar, Jask, and Bushehr accommodate two or three cables respectively. Khark Island's position in the upper 43 percent of Iranian landing points by cable count reflects a modest but established presence within the national submarine cable landscape.

Network Role

Khark Island functions as a single-cable terminus rather than a multi-cable hub, with its entire submarine connectivity provided by the Kuwait-Iran system. This landing point enables a direct bilateral link between Iran and Kuwait, covering a relatively compact corridor within the Persian Gulf. The cable's 380-kilometre span is notably shorter than the national average cable length of approximately 2,871 kilometres across Iran's submarine infrastructure, underscoring its role as a regional, rather than intercontinental, connection.

Within the broader Persian Gulf submarine cable graph, Khark Island's landing point represents one of the few direct Iran-Kuwait connections routed to an Iranian island endpoint, distinguishing it from the mainland landing points that make up the majority of Iran's cable infrastructure.