Iran was plunged into a complete Internet blackout last night as demonstrations over economic conditions spread nationwide, increasing pressure on the country’s leadership.
While it was unclear what caused the Internet cut, first reported by Internet freedom monitor NetBlocks, Iranian authorities have shut down the Internet in response to protests in the past, The Guardian reported.
NetBlocks reported outages in the western city of Kermanshah earlier in the day, as authorities intensified their crackdown against protesters. The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said that Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including eight children, since the demonstrations began in late December.
Cloudflare Radar, which monitors Internet traffic on behalf of the Internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, said that IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), a standard widely used for mobile infrastructure, was affected.
“IPv6 address space in Iran dropped by 98.5 per cent, concurrent with IPv6 traffic share dropping from 12 to 1.8 per cent, as the government selectively blocks Internet access amid protests,” read Cloudflare Radar’s social post.
Shopkeepers heeded calls yesterday from seven Kurdish political groups for a general strike, closing their doors in Kurdish regions and dozens of other cities around Iran. Demonstrations reached all 31 provinces yesterday as the protest movement, now in its 12th day, showed no signs of abating.
In the southern Fars province demonstrators pulled down the statue of the former senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force (IRGC) commander Qassem Suleimani – considered a hero of mythical proportions by government supporters.
IHR said Wednesday was the bloodiest day of the now 12-day movement, with 13 protesters confirmed to have been killed. “The evidence shows that the scope of crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding hundreds more have been wounded and more than 2,000 arrested.
Witnesses in the capital Tehran and major cities of Mashhad and Isfahan told Reuters that protesters gathered again in the streets yesterday, chanting slogans against the Islamic Republic’s clerical rulers.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s late Shah toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, called in a video post on X on Wednesday for more protests.
Posts on social media said demonstrators chanted pro-Pahlavi slogans in several cities and towns across Iran.
The suppression of Internet access in Iran is not unprecedented. In June last year, when the country was exchanging missile strikes with Israel, temporary Internet restrictions were put in place by Iran’s Information and Communications Ministry.
“We inform the honourable people of Iran that, in view of the country’s special conditions and with the measures of the competent authorities, temporary restrictions have been imposed on the country’s Internet,” a message from the ministry read at the time.
Full Internet blackouts, however, have become more difficult for Tehran to achieve amid a proliferation of low-earth-orbit Internet access services such as Elon Musk’s Starlink, though most people in Iran do not have Starlink consoles to connect to the service.
Over the last several hours, people have been tagging Elon Musk on X and urging him to turn on Starlink access for the country.
The current protests, the biggest wave of dissent in three years, began last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar with shopkeepers condemning the rial currency’s free fall.
Unrest has since spread nationwide amid deepening distress over economic privations arising from rocketing inflation driven by mismanagement and Western sanctions, and curbs on political and social freedoms.
President Masoud Pezeshkian warned domestic suppliers against hoarding or overpricing goods, state media reported earlier yesterday.
“People should not feel any shortage in terms of goods’ supply and distribution,” he said, calling upon his government to ensure adequate supply of goods and monitoring of prices across the country.
Tehran remains under international pressure with US President Donald Trump threatening to come to the aid of protesters if security forces fire on them, seven months after Israeli and US forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites.
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