Iran’s Digital Repression Has Entered A New Phase

Back in 2012, in his Persian New Year message to the Iranian people, President Obama lamented the “electronic curtain” that had fallen over Iran, as the country’s clerical regime ramped up its digital presence and censorship capabilities to track and neuter the nation’s opposition forces. Fast forward nearly fourteen years, and that curtain has grown markedly thicker.

In recent weeks, in response to the most significant domestic unrest in its 46-year history, the Iranian regime imposed a comprehensive internet shutdown. Beginning on January 8^th, connectivity trackers such as NetBlocks.org registered a near-total interruption of Iran’s access to the World-Wide Web, as well as to the country’s domestic internet, colloquially known as the National Information Network (NIN).

The move was predictable. In 2009, the controversial reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second presidential term prompted the emergence of the “Green Movement” – a broad-based, internet-savvy protest wave numbering in the millions. Iran’s regime responded by surging online, first to throttle the protests and then to construct a sophisticated web of censorship and information control.

That architecture has only grown more sophisticated in recent years, thanks to help from Chinese firms like ZTE and Huawei. At the same time, the Iranian regime has poured billions of dollars into its domestic internet infrastructure, even as the country’s economy has cratered. Those investments reflect a clear recognition in Tehran that connectivity is the lifeblood of the domestic opposition – and that controlling it is worth virtually any cost.

The latest internet clampdown has also served as an enabler of regime brutality. News outlets are belatedly reporting that the Islamic Republic has used the cover of a sustained media blackout to carry out the most extensive repression in its history. Authoritative figures remain hard to come by, precisely as the regime intended. But credible reports suggest that the number of those killed by security forces could be as many as 30,000. And that figure will surely continue to rise as more information trickles out of the country.

For weeks now, Western governments have worked to pierce the informational blackout. In this effort, Starlink, the upstart connectivity platform pioneered by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has loomed large, and for good reason. Starlink has already made a massive difference in denied environments like Ukraine, and hopes have run high that the advanced tech might succeed in Iran as well.

But here, even Starlink has faltered. Iranian Starlink users have experienced massive “packet loss” due to sophisticated jamming that prevented them from communicating with one another, and with the outside world. That jamming, moreover, doesn’t appear to be homegrown. There is broad expert consensus that Iran’s cash-strapped technology and defense sectors lack the capacity to develop such connectivity-denial tools on their own. Rather, the tech is probably of foreign origin – and likely from China, with whom Iran has dramatically deepened its strategic partnership in recent years as part of a broader “Axis of Upheaval” oriented against the West.

So, what comes next? As the immediate danger to regime stability has begun to recede, Iran’s leaders have slowly moved to reconnect the country to the outside world. But experts warn that the Iranian regime has learned an ominous lesson.

The shutdown could “signal a longer-term strategy for the Iranian government,” a recent Chatham House analysis cautioned. “Internet monitor Filterwatch asserts that Iran is now aiming for ‘absolute digital isolation’: completely cutting off the country from global platforms, and allowing access to the global internet only for those with security clearance, via a strict ‘White List.’”

That approach hinges on the continued expansion of the National Information Network. For the moment, that infrastructure remains incomplete; as of late 2024, Iranian officials acknowledged that the NIN – envisioned to include homegrown alternatives to Western websites, social media platforms and media streaming services – was still less than 60 percent operational.

But the long-term implications are clearly profound. As Calla O’Neil of the American Foreign Policy Council has noted, once fully realized the NIN “will grant the Iranian regime unprecedented ability to sever international connectivity without disrupting core infrastructure.”

Today’s internet blackout in Iran, in other words, is merely the most visible manifestation of an accelerating information arms race. Iran’s radical regime is racing to consolidate digital control over its captive population. If it succeeds in doing so, Iran’s brave protesters will find themselves truly cut off from the outside world.

That, in fact, is precisely what the ayatollahs are counting on.