Majidreza Hariri, head of the Iran–China Chamber of Commerce, announced that the Iranian regime allows traders to use the internet for only 20 minutes per day, and only under the supervision of a monitor.
Hariri warned on Sunday, January 25, that this level of access is “by no means sufficient for the needs of traders.”
He said: “I do not have information about all chambers of commerce, but in Tehran and several provincial capitals, internet access has been enabled on a few systems inside the chambers of commerce. Traders must register in order to use the internet.”
Iran’s Regime Throttles Internet Access Amid Rising Protests
The head of the Iran–China Chamber of Commerce described this method of internet access as “undesirable” and added: “This amount of use is only sufficient to check a few emails.”
The Iranian regime shut down the internet across Iran shortly after protests began on the evening of January 8.
Since then, Iranians’ access to the outside world has been widely disrupted. Nevertheless, reports, images, and videos that have with great difficulty passed through the wall of censorship present a horrifying picture of the scale and organization of the killing of citizens.
NetBlocks, an independent global internet monitoring organization, noted in a post on the social media platform X on January 27 that 20 days had passed since the internet shutdown in Iran.
⚠️ Update: With #Iran's internet shutdown approaching day 20, many networks are becoming visible internationally.
HOWEVER:
📵 No return to usual: Web still heavily filtered on a whitelist basis.
🔧 Circumvention still needed: The opening of protocols can enable new workarounds. pic.twitter.com/psHtkAWeTi— NetBlocks (@netblocks) January 27, 2026
In November 2025, revelations that some journalists, artists, political activists, and figures close to the government benefited from “white SIM cards” and “tiered internet”—due to rent-seeking and the granting of special privileges—sparked a wave of anger and protest among public opinion.
For more than two weeks, the country has been plunged into an engineered silence, and this silence continues. Public internet access, as the main infrastructure of modern life, has been reduced to rumors and fragmented pieces of information.
What remains are only government-approved channels: selected “white” networks that keep regime elements connected to one another while simultaneously cutting society off from the normal cycle of civic life.
In the absence of access inside Iran, determining the number of people killed in the recent protests is impossible, but assessments report that thousands were killed in the January 2026 protests in Iran.
