DUBAI — The number of cuts in undersea communications cables within the past two weeks is five, not four, according to a report in the Khaleej Times.Three cables experienced the five cuts. They are FLAG Europe-Asia, 8.3 kilometers from Alexandria, Egypt, and again near the Dubai coast; SeaMeWe-4 near Penang, Malaysia, and near Alexandria, and FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran. The cables are owned by two submarine cable operators, and the resulting outages have affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt, 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia, and 1.7 million in the United Arab Emirates, according to TeleGeography. The entire nation of Iran reportedly remained offline on February 5th, although only about 25-percent of its 75 million people were connected in the first place.

The first cut occurred January 23rd in Reliance Communications Ventures’ FALCON Iranian pipeline. According to Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director of business development and marketing for Dubai, the damage was not reported and has not been repaired yet. On January 30th, a major cut affecting UAE traffic was reported in SeaMeWe-4 near Alexandria, and on February 1st, FLAG Europe-Asia was cut near Alexandria. On February 5th, cuts were reported in SeaMeWe-4’s Malaysian pipeline and in FLAG Europe-Asia near Dubai. SeaMeWe-4 is partially owned by Verizon and AT&T, and Reliance has strong ties to U.S.-based telecoms and petrochemical companies (notably Chevron).

The pattern of outages and the political alliances of the cables’ owners, combined with recent events in petroleum markets, have set the blogosphere ablaze with speculation about what may have happened. Although the cables’ owners continue to believe a ship’s wayward anchor may have caused the damage, bloggers see spooks and international intrigue in the situation, primarily because the pattern of cable breaks virtually surrounds the Middle East with a communications trench.

Here’s why: In December, Iranian officials announced they were openly trading petrochemical products (notably natural gas and oil) using currencies other than the U.S. dollar, which has been a global standard in oil markets. Additionally, Iran reportedly planned to open this month an independent type of petrochemical stock market that would exclude the U.S. dollar. The exclusion of the U.S. dollar from major world financial markets could weaken the U.S. economy even further, so naturally American companies have a vested interest in discouraging the formation of trading cabals that reject their native currency.

Although the conspiracy is only speculation at this point, bloggers have begun to demand investigation and answers. One of them even went so far as to mention that things didn’t turn out so well for the last country to trade its oil and gas products in currencies other than U.S. dollars: Iraq.