In Denial, Iran Coveting ‘Great Firewall Of China’

Iran says it is not following China’s model of internet access but in reality is inching towards a similar national network.

Minister of Information and Communications Technology Eisa Zarepour claimed Tuesday that modeling China is on the agenda but admitted that the ministry is not the main decision-making body in this regard.

China has its own local platforms and has done a special job on that,but Iran has its own development model, he said, adding: “Of course we are looking for cooperation and synergy with all countries, including China.”

Describing the internet in China as “not very favorable,” he noted that 95 percent of internet traffic in China is domestic. “The government does not intend to implement such a plan in Iran,” he said, quipping that the Islamic Republic’s cabinet members who had travelled there were surprised by the limitations by the lack of access to foreign websites.

Zarepour’s remarks seem contradictory to earlier ones by the regime officials who have always envied the control that Beijing enjoys over the nation’s access to information.

Not all the Internet is available in China as sites belonging to Google, Facebook, Wikipedia companies as well as hundreds of other websites, apps, and video games, are censored or blocked, prompting people to use VPNs for access, inspiring the policy's colloquial nickname: the "Great Firewall of China." A Firewall is a network security device that monitors and filters traffic based on previously established policies.

Second only to China, Iran is on top of the list of countries that have put restrictions on the access of the internet to their people. There are also reports that the regime has started devising plans to give unrestricted internet access to authorities and a cherrypicked list of elites as well as foreign tourists, all of which have uncanny similarities to strategies taken by China.

Earlier in the year, President Ebrahim Raisi ordered the communications ministry to increase the ratio of domestic traffic, so that about 70 percent of the country's total Internet traffic would be from the Iranian national network within the next five years. It means only 30 percent of the online traffic in Iran can be used to access the global Internet.

Last week, Hossein Jalali, a member of the Cultural Committee of the Iranian parliament, urged the government to follow the example of China in setting up a national internet to prevent hackers from infiltrating the country’s infrastructural and governmental portals after major hacks have led to disastrous leaks of troves of confidential data.

Last year, Ali Yazdikhah, another MP, praised China’s “unique” experiences in this field and called for using such experiences in the establishment of a national internet – technically an intranet. The former head of Iran’s state broadcaster, Abdol-Ali Ali-Asgari, has also called for a national internet, famously saying that China has reduced the “American Internet” in the country and that Iran should have its own Internet. 

Hundreds of Iran's government websites have been attacked in recent years by hacktivist groups or groups affiliated with other countries. The cyberattacks hiked particularly since last September, when “Women, Life, Liberty” protests engulfed the country after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody.

In the most recent case, the hacktivist group ‘Uprising till Overthrow' claimed on May 29 that it breached 120 servers at the presidential office, about a month after the group breached into the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry servers, disabling 210 sites and online services. Troves of confidential data have been leaked following the hacks.

The Iranian communications minister – who was sanctioned by the US for his role in limiting internet as part of the crackdown on popular protests -- also stated that the country’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace is in charge of decisions about the Internet access across Iran, highlighting that his ministry is only one the 27 members of this council.

Describing people's concerns about free access to the Internet as a result of the efforts by the "enemies," Zarepour claimed that no one wants to shut down or limit the Internet in the Islamic Republic.

In April, Zarepour himself said that considering the current situation, he is not in favor of unblocking social media platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Playing down the impact of deliberate government internet outages in 2022 on businesses, Zarepoursaid in March that there is no accurate data regarding the damage from internet access restrictions despite reports of about $770 million in losses.