Disconnected: "A shutdown is never just a shutdown"

Since 8 January, amid spreading nationwide protests, millions of Iranians have been living in digital limbo at a moment when information, contact, and coordination matter most – whether for business, health, or simply knowing another human is safe. Phones lines drop, messages fail to send, websites load only to time out, and by afternoon, much of the country was virtually offline. Even the country's centralised National Information Network (NIN), designed to keep domestic traffic alive during blackouts, has at times gone dark. What information does leave the country is fragmentary and difficult to verify.

The digital isolation of the Iranian population

"Internally, there is still a minimum level of internet access, for reasons of state security, to maintain what they describe as essential systems and important exchanges that must remain within the state", says Giovanna Lanni, president of Amnesty International Luxembourg. "But outward communications, especially those of the population, have been reduced and blocked." That includes not just internet access, but ordinary communications more broadly. "The authorities clearly sought to restrict all networks to prevent any form of communications."

There have been brief periods of partial restoration (mostly because a shutdown goes hand in hand with substantial economic losses), but connectivity remained far below previous levels. By late February, traffic had recovered to roughly half of its typical volume – but then, on 28 February, following US-Israeli airstrikes, it collapsed again to near zero, according to Cloudflare Radar, who track Internet connectivity across the globe.

Albeit Iran's current communications breakdown has lasted longer than ever before, the tactic itself is nothing new. Over the past decade, Iranian authorities have repeatedly restricted access; sometimes by slowing speeds to a crawl, sometimes by blocking specific platforms, sometimes by metaphorically pulling the plug entirely. Nor is Iran alone – repressive governments worldwide periodically limit connectivity, especially during elections, protests and armed conflict. According to digital-rights focused non-profit organisation Access Now, documented shutdowns rose from 78 in 2016 to 296 in 2024. Of those, 103 were immediately related to conflicts, 74 in 24 countries were tied to protests and instability, twelve were associated elections.