Could Iran be building a Chinese-style internet system?

Concerns intensified after a former head of Iran’s state broadcaster said Tehran had imported Chinese equipment for a “permanent internet shutdown,” while millions of Iranians endure what monitoring group NetBlocks says is now the world’s longest ongoing nationwide blackout.

Experts warn the Islamic Republic may not be trying to shut the internet off forever but instead attempting to build a controlled and heavily surveilled online ecosystem designed to filter information, monitor communications and isolate Iranians from the outside world while still keeping parts of the economy online.

Mohammad Sarafraz, the former head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and a current member of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, said in an interview with the online newspaper Faraz that factions in Tehran are seeking to restrict global internet access for the general public while preserving it for a limited and controlled group.

He said the Islamic Republic had imported Chinese equipment for “permanently cutting off the internet.”

Spectre of digital control

Laura Edelson, assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University, said the closest comparison may be China’s internet crackdown in Xinjiang after unrest there in 2009, when authorities isolated the Uyghur-majority region from the outside internet for 10 months.

“Functionally, for the vast majority of the population, they were effectively cut off entirely from the outside world,” Edelson said.

She said China’s model is far more sophisticated than simply blocking websites, relying on centralized state control to filter content, surveil users and selectively determine what information people can access.

“This centralized model is one that a lot of other countries, including and almost especially Iran, has been moving toward,” she told Iran International.

She added that turning off the internet forever “is not useful,” meaning authoritarian governments increasingly favor adaptable systems that can tighten restrictions during politically sensitive moments and loosen them when economic activity is needed.

“Iran’s government doesn’t trust its own people,” Edelson said. “The vast majority of people don't support the government.”

“If you can have an internet that you can adaptively not just turn on and off, but control what people can reach and what they can’t reach — that’s a set of internet censorship and surveillance systems that I would be more afraid of personally,” she said.

Can Tehran pull it off?

Max Meizlish, Senior Research Analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former US Treasury official focused on sanctions enforcement, said China has long exported censorship technologies and surveillance capabilities to authoritarian partners.

“We know that China has been a significant partner to several malign actors, including Iran, but also Russia and North Korea, with respect to cyber technology censorship capabilities,” Meizlish told Iran International.

He said China’s own internet system gives Tehran both a blueprint and a commercial partner.

According to Meizlish, Iran’s centralized control over internet infrastructure already gives authorities the ability to regulate what information enters or leaves the country.

“What we could actually see is Iran building out its own internet,” he said, “so that the people of Iran are only able to view what the government wants them to view.”

He said technology transfers between Beijing and Tehran should increasingly be viewed through the lens of human rights abuses and digital repression.

“There’s an argument to be made that this form of censorship constitutes a wide-scale human rights abuse,” Meizlish said.

But Amin Sabeti, founder of cybersecurity research group CERTFA, cautioned that Iran still lacks many of the domestic technological capabilities that made China’s censorship system possible.

“The Iranian regime imports the technology; it doesn't own the technology,” Sabeti said.

Unlike China, he said, Iran lacks strong domestic alternatives to many global services and remains heavily dependent on foreign infrastructure and technology.

“In China, there isn't a need for Gmail because they have good services in terms of email,” Sabeti said. “In Iran, there isn't any proper email service.”

Sabeti said Iran has repeatedly shown it can temporarily shut down the internet during protests and unrest, but questioned whether the regime could sustain a truly permanent nationwide blackout over the long term.

“I don't think it will happen,” he said.

Iran’s rulers may not want to permanently disconnect Iranians from the global internet, but they appear to be moving toward a more sustainable architecture of digital control that allows the state to keep commerce functioning while isolating citizens from independent information, encrypted communications and even family members abroad.

For many Iranians, the question is no longer whether the internet will fully return, but what kind of internet the state intends to allow back.