Iran
plans permanent break from global internet, say activists
Report
claims unrestricted online access will be a ‘government privilege’, limited to
individuals vetted by regime
Aisha
Down
Sat 17
Jan 2026 05.00 GMT
Iran is
planning to permanently break from the global internet, only allowing
individuals vetted by the regime to connect online, according to Iranian
digital rights activists.
“A
confidential plan is under way to turn international internet access into a
‘governmental privilege’,” according to a report from Filterwatch, an
organisation monitoring Iran’s internet censorship, citing a number of sources
in Iran.
“State
media and government spokespersons have already signaled that this is a
permanent shift, warning that unrestricted access will not return after 2026.”
Under the
plan, Iranians who had security clearance or passed government checks would
have access to a filtered version of the global internet, said Amir Rashidi,
the leader of Filterwatch. All other Iranians would be allowed to access only
the national internet: a domestic, parallel internet cut off from the broader
world.
Iran’s
ongoing internet shutdown began on 8 January after 12 days of escalating
anti-regime protests. Thousands of people have been killed, although the
demonstrations appear to have slowed under the weight of a brutal crackdown.
Only
limited information is filtering out of the country because of the blackout,
which is one of the most severe internet shutdowns in history, lasting longer
than Egypt’s 2011 internet shutdown during the Tahrir square protests. A
government spokesperson reportedly told Iranian media that the international
internet would be shut off until at least Nowruz, the Persian new year, on 20
March.
A former
US state department official who worked on internet censorship said the idea
that Iran might attempt a permanent break from the global internet was
“plausible and terrifying”, but also costly.
“It’s not
out of the question that they’re going to do it, but seeing these situations
unfold, the economic impact and the cultural impact will be really massive. And
they may overplay their hand.”
Rashidi
said: “It looks like [authorities] are happy with the current level of internet
connectivity, and they believe this kind of shutdown helped them to control the
situation.”
Iran’s
current shutdown is the culmination of a 16-year effort to cement the regime’s
control over the country’s internet. One side of this effort involves a
sophisticated system to filter internet traffic, allowing a select few to
access the global internet and blocking everyone else – a practice known as
whitelisting.
This
whitelisting was probably enabled by technology exported by China, said
researchers focused on Iran’s internet at Project Ainita and Outline
Foundation, who asked not to be named owing to Iranian reprisals against
digital rights researchers. This is made possible by high-capacity middleboxes,
devices that attach to network cables to monitor and manipulate internet
traffic. Systems commercially available now could be scaled up to allow
authorities to inspect the internet traffic of entire countries – spying on
individual users, as well as blocking websites, protocols, and certain VPN
tools.
“Basically,
there’s this censorship equipment that is sitting on every network, and the
government can prevent connections going in both directions,” they said.
The other
side of this is Iran’s national internet, which can only be accessed inside the
country. It allows all Iranians to use a handful of websites and applications
purpose-built by the regime, including Iranian messaging services, search
engines, navigation apps and a video streaming service similar to Netflix. It
is monitored and has virtually no links to the broader internet.
Iran has
been working towards national internet since 2009, after authorities briefly
shut down the internet during mass protests after the re-election of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and realised that a wholesale shutdown had extreme costs.
“They
literally just pulled the plug without thinking. They had never done it
before,” said the researchers at Outline Foundation and Project Ainita. “And it
basically threw the entire internet, and it really damaged a lot of things on
their end as well.”
By 2012,
the government had established the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and started to
plan for a splintered, domestic internet. Over time, authorities started to
refine their internet shutdowns – blocking services such as Facebook, Twitter
and Google during the 2012 protests, but leaving other economically valuable
services running.
In the 10
years that followed, Iranian authorities used a “carrot and stick” approach to
force online businesses, banks and internet service providers to move their key
infrastructure – datacentres and offices – inside the country, said the
researchers at Project Ainita and Outline. Authorities provided tax breaks to
those who did, and prevented those who refused from working in Iran.
In 2015,
a group of researchers used Bitcoin to buy server space in Iran and began to
scan the country’s IP address space; the range of addresses allocated to
devices on a network.
They made
a startling discovery: Iran was building a domestically connected internet
entirely partitioned from the outside world, using the same protocols to
connect the internal network for a corporate office or home.
“It’s
like when you’re in your office space, you’ve got file servers or you’ve got HR
systems, which, if you go to a coffee shop, you’re not going to be able to
reach them because it’s in an internal network. It’s impossible to route
outwards,” said one of the researchers.
Iran
succeeded. The national internet has been working throughout the protests, and
is now the only option most Iranians have to go online. It is likely to evolve,
but it remains inaccessible to outside users, and unconnected to the broader
internet.
The
former US state department official said the powers Iran had revealed in recent
days, in terms of its ability to control the internet, were considerable;
beyond those of some other authoritarian regimes who might wish to do the same.
But it
remains to be seen if Iran can create a new, permanent online reality. “The
digital rights community is right to raise the alarm. But the impacts of this
will be really severe for Iranian authorities, who will bear responsibility for
that harm to their economy.”
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