From London: As Australians woke on Sunday morning, a new front in the Iran conflict was opening quietly beneath the surface of the Persian Gulf. While missile exchanges and strikes on Tehran dominated the headlines, a parallel campaign of electronic warfare was methodically disabling the satellite navigation systems of commercial ships across one of the world's most critical waterways.
Maritime intelligence firm Windward reported that more than 1,100 vessels experienced GPS jamming and spoofing in the Middle East Gulf within a single 24-hour period following the outbreak of hostilities. According to Windward, widespread GPS jamming erroneously placed vessels at airports, a nuclear power plant, and on land in areas of Iran, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The figure was independently corroborated by analysis cited in Wired, which reported a similar count of affected ships across the broader period since the air campaign against Iran began.
Windward's platform also detected at least 21 new jamming clusters during the same period, with one very large crude carrier waiting to load off Qatar having its AIS position diverted to six separate inland locations within 24 hours. The implications run well beyond the navigational. Other ships had their signals diverted to Iranian ports, triggering false-positive risk and compliance breaches for banks, charterers, insurers, and other marine service providers, while jamming in congested waters where precise navigation is essential for collision avoidance created significant safety hazards.
The electronic dimension of the conflict sits alongside severe physical disruption. On 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched a coordinated joint attack on various sites in Iran, codenamed Operation Roaring Lion by Israel and Operation Epic Fury by the US Department of Defense, targeting key officials, military commanders, and facilities. In retaliation, Iran launched dozens of drones and ballistic missiles throughout the Persian Gulf, targeting Israel as well as US military bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The shipping industry was warned to avoid a US-established "maritime warning zone" covering the Middle East Gulf, Gulf of Oman, North Arabian Sea and Strait of Hormuz. Major shipping company Maersk announced it would reroute some services away from the region, citing crew and cargo safety, while German group Hapag-Lloyd suspended all vessel transit through the Strait until further notice. BIMCO warned that shipping insurance rates were set to increase "manyfold", with ships carrying US or Israeli business connections likely unable to secure cover at all.
For Canberra, the economic implications cannot be ignored. Research cited by 9News from AMP chief economist Shayne Oliver shows that a $US40-a-barrel rise in oil prices could add 40 cents per litre to Australian petrol prices. Hamad Hussain, a climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, said a sustained rise in crude oil to $100 per barrel could add 0.6 to 0.7 per cent to global inflation, and would also drive up natural gas prices. Roughly 20 per cent of global oil and gas exports pass through the Strait, and traffic has already thinned, with some tankers reversing course or switching off AIS signals.
The cyber dimension is generating alarm in Western capitals. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre issued a formal advisory on Monday, warning British businesses to review their digital defences. The NCSC said there is "no current significant change in the direct cyber threat from Iran to the UK," but warned that the fast-moving situation means that could change with little notice and that indirect threats are "almost certain" for organisations with links to the region. Following the coordinated strikes, internet connectivity inside Iran plunged to "close to zero," according to network monitoring groups, largely due to internal restrictions and shutdown measures.
Iran's cyber operators are typically viewed as less advanced than those of major state adversaries in Beijing and Moscow, and most of what has been traced back to Tehran has looked more like spying and digital vandalism than the kind of years-long infrastructure compromises attributed to the bigger cyber powers. That assessment may be due for revision. Security firm SentinelOne assessed that "Iranian state-aligned cyber activity is likely to intensify in the near-term based on a long track record of leveraging cyber operations for asymmetric retaliation, coercive signaling, and strategic messaging."
The British government's position, as articulated by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is that British armed forces deliberately did not participate in the strikes targeting Iran, though British jets are "in the air" to intercept Iranian strikes and British bases are being used by US forces. That fine distinction between alliance support and direct participation will be tested in the days ahead, particularly as Iranian proxies scan for targets they consider linked to Western interests.
What's often lost in the Australian coverage of this conflict is the breadth of the economic exposure. Australian energy companies with Middle East operations, superannuation funds with global shipping investments, and logistics chains dependent on Gulf transit all carry indirect risk from this disruption. The ACCC monitors fuel pricing domestically, but the transmission mechanism from Hormuz to the bowser in Geelong or Townsville is now uncomfortably short.
The GPS jamming crisis also raises questions that deserve serious policy attention in Canberra. Australia's growing dependence on satellite navigation for both civilian logistics and defence operations highlights the vulnerability of GPS infrastructure in contested environments. The ADF has invested heavily in GPS-guided systems; the events in the Gulf are a pointed reminder that electronic warfare can degrade those capabilities at scale without firing a shot.
The competing claims at the heart of this conflict are genuine and not easily resolved. Those who argue the strikes were necessary to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran cite years of failed diplomacy; the strikes followed the failure of indirect talks between the US and Iran on Iran's nuclear programme in early February 2026. Critics point to the economic spillover already spreading far beyond the conflict zone, the risk of miscalculation, and the absence of a credible plan for what comes after regime change. Both positions reflect real stakes. The task for governments watching from a distance, including Australia's, is to prepare for multiple outcomes rather than simply hope the shooting stops before the oil price does permanent damage.