Iran wants to permanently block access to the global Internet. The secret plan set up by the Tehran regime
Iran, protests. Credit line: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
Iran plans to permanently cut itself off from the global internet, allowing only people vetted by the regime to go online without restrictions, Iranian digital rights activists say, The Guardian reports.
“A confidential plan is underway to make access to the global Internet a government privilege,” said a report by Filterwatch, an organization that monitors Internet censorship in Iran, citing multiple sources inside the country.
“State media and government spokespeople have already signaled that this is a permanent change, warning that unrestricted access will not return after 2026,” the activists say.
National Internet and your own Netflix
Under the plan, Iranians who hold security clearances or pass government checks would have access to a filtered version of the global Internet, said Amir Rashidi, director of Filterwatch.
All other Iranians would only have access to the national internet: an internal, parallel network disconnected from the rest of the world.
Basically, ordinary citizens would have a number of websites and apps specially created by the regime, including Iranian messaging services, search engines, browsing apps and a video streaming service similar to Netflix. It is monitored and has virtually no connections to the Internet at large.
Iran's internet shutdown began on January 8, after 12 days of escalating anti-regime protests. Thousands have been killed, while the demonstrations appear to have weakened under the weight of a bloody crackdown.
Only limited information is still coming out of the country because of the blackout, which is one of the most severe internet outages in history, lasting longer than Egypt's 2011 internet blackout during the Tahrir Square protests.
A government spokesman reportedly told Iranian media that international internet would remain down at least until Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on March 20.
At the same time, a former US State Department official who has worked on internet censorship said Iran's idea of attempting a permanent break from the global internet was “plausible and scary”, but also expensive.
“It's not out of the question that they will, but seeing how things like this evolve, the economic and cultural impact will be really massive. And they might overestimate their strength,” he said.
Iran has been working on implementing the national internet since 2009, after authorities briefly shut down the internet during massive protests following the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and realized that a total internet shutdown would have extreme costs.
