The Internet begins to return to Iran after a 3-month interruption

After more than After 2,000 hours of government-mandated blackouts, there were signs on Tuesday that the internet in Iran was returning — at least at very low levels.

More than 90 million citizens were in Iran Without internet For the vast majority of 2026, between the current power outages that began on February 28, when Israel and the United States attacked the countryAn earlier internet shutdown was imposed after widespread protests in January. The reconnection appears to have been ordered by Iranian government officials, but it may only be temporary.

Although some Iranian networks appeared to be connected to the global Internet on Tuesday, researchers warned that the level of access was far below even the partial restoration that Tehran allowed at the end of January and throughout February — and was significantly below Iran’s typical baseline for global Internet connectivity as of December 2025. Knock, NetBlocksand Cloudflare The partial restoration of connectivity in Iran began being documented starting in the early afternoon local time on Tuesday.

“We are seeing some traffic coming from Iran,” says Amir Rashidi, a cybersecurity expert at the internet freedom organization Mian Group. “Some providers have come back online, but it is still too early to say exactly what will happen. After the January protests, some providers were also brought back online, but about 50 percent of the country’s traffic remained down.”

“We don’t see a lot of change for mobile networks,” says Doug Madory, director of internet analytics at Kentik. Instead, he says, some fixed-line providers appear to be restoring their services, with the telecom company affiliated with Iran’s fiber optic service around Tehran. an offer “The biggest profit.”

At the beginning of January, the Iranian regime completely cut off internet access as the state killed thousands of protesters who took to the streets demanding improved economic conditions in the country. The government then completely cut off communication again at the end of February when the United States and Israel went to war in Iran, leaving millions of Iranians unable to contact their families, damaging the local economy, and preventing news and video footage about the war from entering and exiting the country. The limited restoration of internet services on Tuesday comes as the US government continues to negotiate a permanent end to the war with Iran.

Over the past decade, the Iranian regime has undertaken a massive project to control communication and monitor content in the country while building a national intranet aimed primarily at replacing the global Internet. This includes homemade, Heavy surveillance Technology such as search engines, messaging apps, and Passenger transport platforms. But in practice, digital system mechanisms of control are often used as tools of brute force rather than precision. that it Not clear Whether this is a result of technical limitations, political instability, or both.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council apparently ordered the current internet shutdown at the end of February as the war with the United States began. A different group formed by current Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian — known as the country’s Special Headquarters for Regulating and Managing Cyberspace — reportedly ordered the connection restored on Monday, though the move sparked a legal challenge in Iran’s Supreme Court. However, the Iranian Minister of Communications He said That the reconnection process will go ahead based on the President’s order, and that The process is underway To restore connection within 24 hours.

“What we are seeing now is an increase in traffic from Iran, but we will have to wait and see the outcome of the power struggle,” says Rashidi of Mian Group. “Challenging the president’s order in court, given Iran’s political culture, was in a way humiliating for Pezeshkian. So we will have to wait and see how this power struggle ends.”