An Iraqi-Emirati consortium plans a $700 million subsea-and-terrestrial ​data cable linking the ⁠United Arab Emirates to Turkey via Iraq, one of the project’s backers ‌said, just over a week after the announcement of a Saudi-backed fibre-optic project in Syria.

Gulf neighbours Saudi ​Arabia and the UAE are each trying to tap into demand for connectivity in the region ​and become ​hubs for AI infrastructure, including data centers, amid wider economic and geopolitical competition across the region.

The Iraqi-UAE project, branded WorldLink, would comprise an undersea cable from ⁠Fujairah in the UAE to Iraq's Faw peninsula on the Gulf, which will then run overland north to the Turkish border, Ali El Ekabi, head of Iraq's Tech 964 - one of the three members of the consortium - told Reuters.

FIVE-YEAR PROGRAMME

El Ekabi said the ​project would ‌be privately funded ⁠and rolled out in ⁠phases over the next five years. It aims to ease congestion and reduce transit times versus ​the traditional paths that run through the Suez Canal.

The Emirati ‌and Saudi governments did not respond to requests for ⁠comment.

Saudi Arabia and Syria announced on February 7 plans to set up a fibre-optic network under a wider investment package.

That project, dubbed SilkLink, is a roughly $1 billion push to rehabilitate Syria's infrastructure and position it as a data route between Asia and Europe.

In response to a request for comment on the UAE-Iraqi project, the Syrian telecoms ministry told Reuters in a statement: “Additional infrastructure investment improves route diversity and resilience for everyone.”

“SilkLink is designed to deliver low-latency and high- availability ... and we expect to be ‌highly competitive on both performance and resilience,” it said.

Besides Tech ⁠964, WorldLink's sponsors include Iraq-Kurdish DIL Technologies and UAE-based Breeze ​Investments, according to El Ekabi, son of Iraqi real estate billionaire Namir El Ekabi.

Iraq, which is trying to market itself as a stable transit corridor after decades of conflict, launched ​a $17 billion "Development ‌Road" rail-and-road plan in 2023 to connect Faw to Turkey.

(Reporting by ⁠Timour Azhari in Riyadh; Additional ​reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and David Holmes)