The future of the Internet in Iran is more uncertain than ever

For more than For six days, nearly 90 million Iranians have been living under difficult conditions Complete internet blackout. The closure comes after Iranians suffered A complete internet outage is similar At the beginning of January, weeks of limited contact followed while the regime brutally attacked and killed thousands of anti-government protesters. But as The US-Israel war on Iran intensifiesThe conflict adds a new dimension to what could be a damaging but not unprecedented internet blackout.

In these situations, under the design of the system, residents are still able to access the country’s local intranet and a set of applications, known as National Information Network or NINso that daily life continues. The Iranians have now also built and improved the rules of the game Stay online as much as possible When the Iranian regime restricts connectivity, using VPNs and other proxy networks to access the global Internet. While many of these circumvention tools still work, at least to some extent, during a partial power outage, they are not accessible during a total power outage. As is often the case, only the Iranian government, military, and wealthy elites currently have access to the external Internet, along with a small group of additional gateways that obtain Internet access from Starlink terminals.

Iranians were plunged into internet darkness almost immediately after US and Israeli missiles struck the country on February 28, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Since then, he says Doug Madorydirector of internet analysis at monitoring firm Kentik, said there was “minimal traffic” leaving the country, with all networks seeing a roughly 99 percent drop in traffic. “The concept is that there are some whitelists that allow (residual) traffic to pass through, either to an individual with a preferred status or for some technical reason such as updating encryption certificates,” he says.

But even this SIM card is not immune to wartime disruptions. “With the limited connectivity remaining, multiple networks experienced additional outages,” Madori says, adding that technical malfunctions caused by airstrikes on Iran were likely to blame. Georgia Tech’s Internet monitoring project, IODA, has done so as well I mentioned “Damage to internet or energy infrastructure” causing Iranian networks to stop working. “Even if the government lockdown is lifted, connectivity issues may persist due to damage to infrastructure,” Madori says. “The lockdown hides our ability to understand the true state of connectivity in Iran.”

Over the past decade, the Iranian regime has done just that Technical infrastructure built, Laws and surveillance devices To digitally oppress its citizens. Multiple internet shutdowns in 2019, 2022, 2025, and now twice this year have demonstrated more sophisticated blocking techniques. With every internet outage, Iranians are cut off from their loved ones, unable to access accurate news, and silenced when trying to obtain evidence of regime abuses or possible war crimes outside the country.

As Iranian censorship and censorship intensified over the years, it developed NIN and its suite of internal applications as a solution to allow daily life to continue in Iran and keep the economy running when global connectivity shuts down. Iranian digital rights group Filterwatch says it has watched the government during the current lockdown Promotion A local search engine as part of the country’s intranet. The group also says it has noticed the government sending some text messages warning people not to connect to the global internet He could face legal action.

NIN platforms are hotbeds for surveillance and information control in general. Experts say that the intranet “Autocratic network design“Creates Reach levels And in Iran, global connectivity may be provided selectively to elites, technology companies, universities, or other institutions, rather than to the general population.