In the long list of the prohibited topics of discussion in Iran under the rule of the mullahs, the internet is among the most central. The internet which compared to other nations is offered at a very low speed, but even this thin stream has been blocked and cut down by the government with very complicated filtering.
There hardly a day that the clerics don’t complain about the so-called ‘social crises that the internet has brought for their ‘security’.
So, the regime’s MPs, are enacting ‘laws’ to suppress any freedom. Looking a little further in the past, one finds such examples in the history of this regime. From the banning of the video device of the eighties, which finally in the summer of 1993, the mullahs inevitably officially accepted the defeat and the arrest, fines, and flogging for a videotape or the video device ended.
But this was not because the regime’s minds about freedom were changed, it was because they were facing a much worse enemy from the side of their views, which was the satellite.
Therefore, after the defeat in the case of the ‘video apparatus’, they went to war with ‘satellite’, and the law banning the use of satellite was put on the agenda of the parliament on September 20, 1994. According to this ‘law’, any ‘importing, transporting, maintaining, distributing, operating, installing, and repairing’ satellites is considered a ‘crime‘ and is punishable by fines, flogging, and imprisonment.
But in the end, the fight, including that by the regime’s armored vehicles, which squeezed the satellite dished on the streets in ridiculous shows, did not in the favor of this regime, and they accepted the defeat even if they have not admitted it publicly.
Government officials have repeatedly admitted that with such a ridiculous struggle, they are only mocking themselves in the eyes of the people.
Including one of Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet minister at the time, acknowledged that more than 70 percent of Iranians use satellites without leaving room for Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s howls, and mocked the regime.
While the conflict between the regime and the satellite was still hot, this time the ‘Internet’ was the scourge of the system. Needless to say, if the regime’s restrictions, punishments, and fines, were able to block video and satellite, ‘filtering’ could be able to block the Internet and prevent the people from using it.
All these discussions are raising one question, why is Khamenei is fearing so much the internet? Why does he enter into a double-edged sword that he knows makes the Iranian people more of an enemy and does not have the ability to shut down and control it completely?
Basically, the reactionaries are incompatible with new phenomena. Because they consider it a threat to their existence and their petrified thinking.
When such reactionaries also attain the levers of ‘government,’ they are always afraid of this ‘consciousness’ because they know well that any ‘consciousness’ can destroy their superstition and ignorance apparatus and prove the invalidity of their vanities. So, they go through anyway to silence such voices.
This logic had examples in the history of the world before our present-day Iran, but what the Iranian people experienced was the most brutal and filthy kind of history.
With the rise of Khomeini, a new kind of dictatorship and religious fascism emerged. Because the government based on absolute dominance wants to dominate the people of Iran from the mind and conscience to the homes of the people. Because by accepting the smallest gap in its system, it will tear up.
The glass life of this totalitarian government is based on ‘lie’, ‘duplicity’, and ‘repression’. This is a clear and fluent expression by Khamenei, who said that the first retreat of his regime would lead to a chain of retreats that would eventually lead to its collapse.
Of course, the failure of the clerical regime to impose these restrictions shows the strength of the people who have not yet allowed their repressive demands to be fulfilled. A fact that the officials explicitly acknowledge.
The state-run daily Shargh wrote: “Do not experience video or satellite bans on the Internet. The parliament should learn from the failure of the implementation of the law banning the use of satellite receiving equipment, which is in its 26th life this year, and should not go to the law for filtering social networks and media, because people find ways to circumvent it.” (Shargh daily, November 5)
