The final straw: Iranians dread plans for a 'national' internet

Watching YouTube in Iran feels like torture. So does downloading an app from Google Play, or even sending a voice message on WhatsApp. In short, using the internet here is like living with a chronic disease—you may learn to cope, but you'll never stop hating it.

Iran’s extensive internet censorship, known as "filtering," began in 2001. Over the past two decades, countless websites and applications have been blocked under various pretexts. Popular platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Instagram have all faced restrictions at some point. Yet, in a recent survey, nearly three-quarters of respondents named Instagram as their favorite app, and more than half reported using Telegram and WhatsApp daily.

On the surface, government filtering appears futile. But beneath that, it’s a thriving industry. People find ways to bypass these restrictions, but it comes at a literal cost: the price of a circumvention tool, typically a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

"83.6% of Iranian users rely on VPNs, with at least 30% spending up to 150,000 tomans ($2.50) per month on subscriptions," said a spokesperson for Masoud Pezeshkian during his presidential campaign, highlighting just the tip of a murky multi-million-dollar industry built on Iranians' need to stay connected. "Given the number of internet users in Iran, the VPN market is estimated to exceed 50 trillion rials ($85 million) annually," he added. The real figure is likely much higher, with the industry dominated by those connected to the regime.

The primary motivation behind Iran's internet censorship isn't profit, of course—it's control.

"One major but often overlooked consequence of filtering is that it makes accessing information even harder for low-income individuals," says Nasrin, a sociology student in Tehran. "You have to buy VPNs every week just to stay ahead of the government blocking the active ones. It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole, and not everyone can afford to play. Ironically, those excluded are the ones the regime fears the most."

It was this "feared" crowd that took to the streets in November 2019, protesting a sudden hike in gas prices. The regime’s response was brutal. They shut down the internet across Iran for nearly a week, and in that darkness, 1,500 protesters were killed. The internet blackout ensured that few reports or images of the massacre reached the outside world.

Since then, many Iranians are even more concerned about the Islamic government's plans to create a ‘national internet’, a domestic network cut off from the real internet. The blackout in 2019, many say, was just a ‘rehearsal’. I’d rather call it a drill, because shutting down the internet was –and still is– a policing operation.

“Almost 60% of the National Information Network is built,” said Sattar Hashemi last week. He is, mind you, the Communications Minister in Iran’s new ‘reform’ cabinet. Hashemi’s other landmark plan is to “organize” filtering. Organize, not eliminate, not even loosen. So much for all the pre-election promises and slogans: high-speed internet, dismantling the VPN mafia, respecting peoples’ choices. Just a load of hot air, as many expected.

“I spend many hours a week trying to connect to VPNs, switching from one to another to stay afloat.” Ehsan is 35 and works in a start-up. “To access my online banking, I have to disconnect the VPN. To access Google Play, I have to reconnect it. Why on earth would you block Google Play? Many useful websites are also filtered, cutting off people's access to free educational content. YouTube, for instance, is a valuable resource, especially for those who cannot afford tuition. But it’s now blocked. Yes, everyone uses VPNs. But those are not reliable, and slower amid a slow connection."

Even the more hardline candidates in the recent presidential elections spoke against an internet policy that they know people find not just draconian, but unfair. Because not everybody is affected by it equally. Almost every regime official has a presence on banned platforms such as X, including the Supreme Leader himself. So do journalists and activists with ties to the regime, who seem to not see—or more likely, choose to ignore—the irony of defending ‘filtering’ on a ‘filtered’ platform.

“They don’t care about the people,” says Kazem, a 67-year-old pensioner who is religious but has had enough with “all the mess” of the Islamic Republic. “It's not easy for me to keep searching for VPNs. I don't understand any of it and don't know where to buy it or how to install it. We’ve become like criminals who are constantly exchanging illegal goods. I've always told my children to obey the law. But when the law takes away our right to a simple life, what choice do we have but to break the law?"

This would resonate with millions of Iranians who get online not to protest but to earn a living. In 2022, the regime ‘filtered’ Instagram as part of its crackdown on the Woman Life Freedom uprising. Protesters were using it to organize and expose the brutality of the security forces. But many more relied on it—back then the only ‘unfiltered’ platform—to promote their products and services. With the economy in the abysmal state that it has been for a few years, small, ‘home-based’ businesses are many people’s only hope to get by.

According to Iran’s Ministry of Labor, over 80% of home-based businesses are owned by women, a big majority of whom operate on Instagram. “Before Instagram was filtered, I had regular customers and earned a living. I stopped promoting my handicraft during the uprising because there was an unspoken agreement among many users not to self-promote while young girls and boys were braving bullets on the streets.” This is Somayeh, a 34-year old woman from Birjand in northeast Iran.

“Life has become much harder since. Those weeks of inactivity lost me many customers. And the filtering of Instagram almost killed my business. I’m holding to what’s left and working double time to rebuild. I’m on Instagram nonstop, so VPN is like air to me. I’m always looking and asking for one—from family, friends, or others like me. I dread the ‘national internet’ though. If they get their way, there’ll be no Instagram and all I’ve done these years will go up in smoke."

President Pezeshkian constantly says he hasn’t made any promises that he would fail to keep. But he did repeatedly complain about the state of the internet during his campaign. He did criticize the restriction of social freedoms, and the suppression of dissenting voices. Those words, as little as they may have meant to him, have created expectations in people like Somayeh that will almost certainly go unmet. "A filtered, pasteurized ‘national’ internet will not prevent but hasten—and likely expand—the next round of protests that we all know is coming."