Internet Service in Iran Cut or Restricted as Deadly Protests Reach Possible Tipping Point

Iranian authorities appeared to be cutting off Internet access on Thursday in the capital and some other regions of the country as a mass measure. Protests and chants against the government. continue. Several sources in Tehran told News themezone that the Internet was not working in the capital.

Monitoring organization NetBlocks said around 8:30 local time in Iran that its live data “shows that #Iran is now in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout; the incident follows a series of increasing digital censorship measures targeting protests across the country and hampering the public’s right to communicate at a critical time.”

A News themezone source in the capital said there were “huge crowds throughout Tehran. Unprecedented” and confirmed that the internet was down for most people in the city. He said some people, with more robust and reliable merchant accounts, would still be able to connect. Not long after, that source became inaccessible, suggesting that the blackout had widened further.

There were reports on social media, largely from anti-regime activists, that web service was also down or severely restricted in the cities of Esfahan, Lodegan, Abdanan and parts of Shiraz.

The internet outages came as Iranians began chanting from their windows against the regime, following a call from exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the US-backed former shah, to make their voices heard at 8 pm local time (noon Eastern). Analysts and insiders told News themezone that the scale of the response to Pahalvi’s call could determine whether the deadly, 12 day protests fade away as previous rounds of unrest have, or become a major challenge to the government and spark a possible broader crackdown.

“All the big crowds in my neighborhood are pro-Pahlavi and in several areas my sources report the same thing: the pro-Pahlavi crowds prevail, without a doubt,” the source in Tehran told News themezone, calling them “monarchists answering to Reza.”

The unrest has so far left at least 39 people dead, including at least four members of the security services, and more than 2,260 people detained, according to the US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency.

NetBlocks previously said its “data shows loss of connectivity at #Iran’s TCI backbone internet provider in the restive city of Kermanshah as protests spread across the country on its 12th day; the incident comes amid a surge in casualties with signs of outages in multiple regions.”

Iranian authorities periodically restrict or disable Internet access when they expect major protests or other potentially destabilizing events.

President Mahsoud Pezeshkian, considered a reformist but subordinate to Iran’s veteran supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hinted before his election in 2024 that he would free up the Internet and make more websites accessible. However, it remains strictly restricted. Social media sites like TikTok, Facebook and X are officially banned, as is access to American and European news sites, including News themezone.

Many young, tech-savvy Iranians have become adept at circumventing the restrictions, but it is a cumbersome process, and when the regime slows down the internet at politically sensitive times, the entire system can become unusable.