As protests have increased across Iran, citizens’ access to the internet has faced widespread restrictions. Although, compared with the twelve-day war, the internet has not been officially shut down nationwide, in practice users’ access has either been completely disrupted or has faced serious difficulties. This situation has led international internet monitoring organizations to refrain from registering a complete internet shutdown in Iran.
Since Saturday evening, January 3, reports indicate a sharp decline or effective disruption of the internet in various parts of the country, particularly in cities and areas where protests have been more widespread. The few users who managed to send messages from these areas say that even sending a simple text message has sometimes required hours of effort.
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Investigations show that the main characteristic of these restrictions is their targeted and localized implementation. For example, in Tehran, areas where higher levels of protests have been reported have faced more severe internet restrictions. This pattern has resulted in mobile internet access being disrupted in one city, or even in parts of a single district, while in other areas the internet remains available.
The main question is why the internet in Iran is not completely shut down. During the November 2019 protests, a nationwide internet shutdown faced negative reactions from economic actors and businesses dependent on online activity, placing significant pressure on the government. At that time, the Ministry of Communications and the Telecommunication Infrastructure Company undertook a redesign of how internet access is managed.
Within this framework, users’ internet access was defined in layered form. With the development and modernization of filtering tools, domestic and international traffic was separated at the operator level, making it possible to impose restrictions at provincial and even local levels.
This experience appears to have now enabled the Iranian regime, during periods of protest, to preserve a level of internet usage deemed low risk, while simultaneously disrupting access to the open internet, messaging platforms, and filtering circumvention tools. Under such conditions, global internet monitoring organizations, when assessing Iran’s status, record active connections, speed test performance, and statistical data, but users in practice are unable to use many services, including messaging applications.
This type of disruption, which focuses on severely reducing the quality and effectiveness of the internet rather than imposing a full shutdown, is applied selectively and in a targeted manner. For example, in cities where protests emerge, the internet in those same areas is disrupted; or in Tehran, when protesters’ presence in the streets increases, the mobile internet of operators such as Hamrah-e Aval (the state-run Mobile Communication Company of Iran) and Irancell (one of Iran’s largest mobile operators) is restricted, while fixed home broadband internet remains active at the same time.
It appears that the Iranian regime has sought, as much as possible, to avoid paying the political cost resulting from a complete internet shutdown, similar to what occurred during the twelve-day war. Based on this approach, disruptions are applied in a targeted and technical manner.
Meanwhile, certain specific protocols, including QUIC, which is used by many applications, browsers, and filtering circumvention tools, have been explicitly targeted. Put simply, the internet is nominally available, but in practice its functionality cannot be relied upon.
This trend shows that the internet, as one of the primary channels of communication for citizens, is subjected to security restrictions during periods of social unrest. In the 1980s, international telephone calls and cable lines were cut by the Iranian regime; in 2009, mobile phones and SMS services were targeted; and since 2016, the internet has become the main tool for controlling communications in times of crisis.
