Iran first imposed a near-total communications blackout on the third day of nationwide protests in January, and tightened controls after the war with the United States and Israel began on February 28. The shutdown, already the longest in the country’s history, has left most Iranians with access only to state-controlled domestic networks and state media.
Shutting down communications is a familiar tactic for the clerical regime: it has done so during the 2019 fuel-price protests, during the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” movement after Jina Mahsa Amini’s death in custody, and again in January as anti-government demonstrations spread beyond Tehran. Cloudflare and monitors such as NetBlocks recorded internet traffic collapsing to almost zero in January, and connectivity has remained at only a tiny fraction of normal levels since the outbreak of the current war.
The government defends the blackout on national-security grounds, saying foreign agents and opponents are circulating images and videos of sensitive military and state sites. But the restrictions go far beyond limiting information: they have crippled businesses, severed families’ communications, and trapped much of the country within a heavily censored national intranet that many Iranians distrust.
Some people still reach the global web through risky and costly workarounds. During the January unrest, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service became a lifeline for some, even as authorities jammed signals. As the crackdown intensified, black-market Starlink kits that once sold for about $1,000 reportedly surged to over $5,000. VPNs remain available but often at prohibitive prices; one source told DW they paid up to 1 million tomans per gigabyte for unstable filtered access. With a minimum monthly wage around 16 million tomans, reliable internet access has become a luxury for most Iranians.
That inequality prompted one resident to call the situation “a digital apartheid era,” saying access is now allocated by class and political loyalty: “If you are university faculty, a pro-government journalist or part of an online propaganda project, you get internet access. If you are rich, you buy an expensive VPN. But if you are ordinary, your share is the national internet and high walls of censorship.”
The economic impact has been severe. Online sellers who relied on Instagram and messaging apps report businesses collapsing when customers and suppliers cannot connect. Economist Hassan Mansur cited official estimates of roughly $37.7 million in daily losses from the shutdown, with January alone costing an estimated $185 million in lost income from Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp. He said about 70% of Iranian businesses are affected and that revenue falls for online businesses range from 50% to 90%, with some firms disappearing entirely.
The Iranian state promotes its domestic intranet as a solution, but lacks the large-scale domestic search engines, cloud systems and social platforms that underpin China’s closed model. That shortfall, combined with widespread fear of surveillance and arrests tied to digital activity, has left citizens deeply skeptical of government-backed apps. Digital-rights activists have reported intelligence agents accessing private chats during arrests; one said agents referenced messages they had seen in WhatsApp while detaining him.
As the global internet retreats for many Iranians, other information channels have narrowed. Satellite television remains a key source of outside news for some households, though jamming has reduced its reliability. Some Persian-language outlets abroad have revived shortwave radio broadcasts. The shift toward older technologies underscores how censorship can force societies backward as well as suppress dissent.
The blackout also narrows the public sphere: it makes verifying information harder, reduces direct communication between people on the ground and foreign media, and strengthens the state’s ability to impose its narrative. While the government insists the shutdown protects national security, for many Iranians the prolonged internet disruption is another sign that the regime will sacrifice livelihoods, transparency and basic connections to preserve power. Edited by: Karl Sexton