Shutting down the web won’t shut out spies

Since its brief war in June with Israel, Iran has throttled Internet traffic and jammed GPS, making routine tasks online a struggle, and prompting Iranians’ fears of greater surveillance.

Throughout its 12 days of war with Israel in June, Iran enforced a near total Internet blackout on its people, saying that it was a necessary
security measure to stop
Israeli infiltration.

Though the authorities have since technically lifted the blackout, Internet activists, tech entrepreneurs and rights monitors say that a wartime choke-hold on the web remains, leaving many Iranians still in the dark.

Digital rights experts say that Internet speeds have been slowed, online traffic has been curtailed and geolocation positioning services, or GPS, is jammed. The use of satellite internet tools like Starlink, which could allow users to bypass such blocks, has been criminalised.

The partial shutdown has left Iranians struggling to communicate with one another and the outside world. Compounding Iran’s international isolation, the United Nations recently reimposed sanctions on its nuclear programme.

The Internet restrictions have had profound implications for ordinary Iranians. Since the war, simple tasks like finding directions, ordering a taxi or paying for
groceries online have become an hourslong saga.

Abbas, a 71-year-old businessman, eventually gave up on his phone’s online directions as he tried to find a friend’s house in the city of Karaj.

“I kept driving in circles,” said Abbas, who asked to withhold his last name out of fear of reprisal for speaking to foreign media, adding that he was not alone in his frustration. “Everybody is lost.”

Officials from Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology did not respond to requests for comment on Internet restrictions. But a June article by the news agency Tasnim, which is linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said that “Internet restrictions are necessary in wartime for defence against
the enemy.”

Sattar Hashemi, the information minister, has publicly acknowledged GPS jamming, saying it was intended to stop Israel from flying drones in Iran. Authorities have also told State media that Internet controls are necessary to prevent the spread of Israeli disinformation and cyberattacks.

Curbing the Internet will have limited impact on Israeli intelligence, said Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at the Miaan Group, a US-based rights organisation focussed on the Middle East. He said Iran was already deeply infiltrated by Israeli operatives.

Israel demonstrated the extent of its intelligence on Iran during the brief June war, when the military killed a string of top generals and nuclear scientists in their homes, knocked out air-defence systems and forced the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, into hiding.

The Islamic Republic has partly censored the Internet since 2005, with social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram blocked across the country. It has also temporarily shut down Internet access in parts of the country before,
in response to large-scale anti-government protests.

After Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear and military sites in June, Iranian authorities severed public access to websites and online messaging platforms, except for state-run or government-approved networks. They also blocked Internet-based calls, along with international phone calls and text messages, making it almost impossible for Iranians to reach loved ones abroad.

Digital rights activists say the recent shutdown has been far reaching and seemingly open-ended, and signals a growing wariness among Iranian officials since the war about allowing open Internet access.

After the fighting ended in June, it emerged that Israel had used mobile phones and online tools to track the bodyguards of Iran’s leaders and nuclear scientists. Internet activists inside Iran and abroad argue that authorities are exploiting those security concerns to curb the relative social and political freedoms that the web offers, not least as an outlet for criticising the government.

The shutdown also gave Iran a long sought-after opportunity to shift its Internet model closer to that found in China, by imposing the use of domestic versions of international apps for everything from messaging to shopping, analysts say.

WhatsApp, an international messaging app, has been temporarily banned in Iran before, but Iranians have often used virtual private networks, or VPNs, to circumvent those restrictions.

During the fighting in June, when Iran heavily restricted internet access, international apps such as WhatsApp were blocked and many VPNs became inaccessible, according to Rashidi of Miaan. That forced Iranians to switch to using local platforms like Bale, a messaging app, which many had long avoided because of surveillance concerns.

“Iran’s entire goal for decades now was to isolate people as much as possible onto the domestic network,” said Fereidoon Bashar, the director of a Toronto-based tech firm, ASL19, which makes VPN software for the Iranian market.

Since the war, VPN use has largely been restored, but most are domestically made platforms, which experts say could be subject to surveillance and monitoring by the authorities. The use of VPNs had been so widespread that Iranians were some of the most prolific users of Instagram, despite its official ban. And senior officials — including Ayatollah Khamenei — frequently release statements on platforms like X, which is also banned.

The extent of the recent crackdown, however, has broken many Iranians’ will to get around the restrictions.

Internet censors have cut off many tools that were once used to access the Internet, said Saeed Souzangar, a tech entrepreneur based in Tehran. “I am a tech expert and, right now, I am connected with immense difficulty.”

The censorship has hurt Iranian businesses at a time of severe economic crisis.

Amirhossein, a 38-year-old in the IT department of a food distributor, said some employees had resorted to manually checking inventories rather than relying on online systems. He asked not to be identified by his full name out of concerns about talking to foreign media.

In August, 100 companies signed a letter demanding that the government lift Internet restrictions.

In response, Iran’s authorities passed a law imposing a “tiered Internet” system, in which businesses, academics and journalists can receive access to faster Internet than general users. Wary of previously strong resistance to the project, however, the government has put the system in place slowly.

Cybersecurity experts like Rashidi of Miaan warned that such measures were gradually eroding most Iranians’ access to unfettered Internet. With each shutdown, the restrictions have worsened, he said, adding, “This is the new norm.”