Iranians greet internet return with grief, anger and defiance

"Live metrics show a partial restoration to internet connectivity in Iran on day 88, after 2093 hours of near-total isolation from international networks, the longest nationwide internet shutdown in modern history," the internet observatory Netblocks said in a Tuesday post on X.

The restoration followed a Monday vote by a special cyberspace body created by President Masoud Pezeshkian to return international internet access to its pre-January 2026 status.

However, state media reported Tuesday that an administrative court had temporarily suspended implementation of the order that established the body, raising questions over the legal future of the reopening process.

ICT Minister Sattar Hashemi said the restoration decision was approved by nine votes to two at the body’s first official meeting, while his deputy said the reopening of fixed-line internet had begun nationwide.

On Monday, the IRGC-affiliated Fars News agency first questioned whether the administration had the authority to issue such an order, arguing that because the restrictions were imposed by the Supreme National Security Council, only the same body could formally reverse them.

Hours later, however, Fars appeared to soften its position in an editorial describing the reopening as a necessary “technical and security” decision that would have happened “sooner or later” as cyber conditions improved.

The outlet said the restrictions had originally been imposed to prevent cyber espionage and protect critical infrastructure during wartime conditions and an unprecedented wave of cyberattacks.

While acknowledging criticism over the legal process behind the decision, Fars dismissed efforts to turn the issue into a political dispute and accused some reformist media outlets of exploiting the shutdown to deepen internal divisions during what it described as a “full-scale war.”

The meeting of the Special Task Force on Cyberspace Management ended with nine votes in favor and three against reconnecting Iran to the global internet, according to reports.

Peyman Jebelli, head of Iran’s state broadcaster, and Mohammad-Amin Aghamiri, secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, were among the strongest opponents of restoring international internet access, Faraz reported citing informed sources.

According to Faraz, both men remained firmly opposed to reconnecting the country to the global internet until the end of the meeting.

The report said Aghamiri’s position was particularly notable because the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace is appointed by the president. Although Aghamiri was first appointed under the previous administration, Pezeshkian later retained him in the post.

Faraz said Aghamiri’s opposition had placed him at odds with the government at a time when Pezeshkian has publicly identified restoring internet access as one of his priorities.

The report described how menstruation remains shrouded in shame and silence for many Iranian girls, particularly in smaller towns and poorer communities, where limited education and cultural taboos leave adolescents unprepared for puberty.

One student in a village near Miandoab told Shargh she avoided leaving her classroom during breaks out of fear classmates would notice blood stains on her clothes. Another girl believed she had cancer when she experienced her first period.

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“Absence from school is one of the first reactions many girls have when they experience menstruation,” a teacher identified as Nazanin told the newspaper. “The less awareness there is in the family, the more common this behavior becomes.”

Rising costs force unsafe alternatives

Inflation, the report said, has sharply increased the cost of sanitary pads and other hygiene products, particularly affecting women in low-income and marginalized areas.

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Somayeh, a 38-year-old worker in a food packaging workshop near Tehran, said long shifts and limited bathroom access often force her to delay changing sanitary products for hours.

“When you have to choose between buying food for your children or sanitary pads for yourself, you choose food,” she said.

Social worker Mahya Vahedi said some women have turned to cloth and other non-hygienic substitutes because they cannot afford sanitary pads, leading to infections and untreated wounds.

“Buying hygiene products has become a luxury for many families,” Vahedi said.

Unlike several countries that provide free menstrual products in schools and public spaces, Iran offers almost no free access to sanitary products in schools, universities or public facilities, the report said.

Debate grows over menstrual leave

The report also highlighted growing debate around menstrual leave policies in workplaces.

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Shima, an office worker interviewed by Shargh, said menstruation remains difficult to discuss openly at work despite the physical pain many women endure.

“How can part of the workforce spend several days each month working through pain and bleeding with no recognition of those conditions?” she said.

Political economy analyst Anisha Asadollahi said menstrual leave has become a point of tension between gender equality demands and Iran’s labor market realities.

Some critics, she said, fear additional labor protections for women could discourage employers from hiring them, citing past labor policies that unintentionally reduced women’s employment opportunities.

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But Asadollahi argued recognizing menstrual leave remains important because workplace norms are still built around “the male body as the standard worker.”

“Giving up rights because of fear of discrimination only strengthens unequal structures,” she said.

Citing field reports from several provinces, the outlet said essential daily items including sterile gauze, specialized wound dressings, catheters, catheter bags, syringes, lubricating gel, tissues and medication for pressure sores have seen steep price increases.

The cost of these supplies, according to the report, has at least doubled or tripled over the past two months for people requiring long-term care.

The continued economic crisis has reduced access to critical medical equipment, worsening pressure sores and undermining the quality of daily care for patients, Khabar Online said.

The outlet warned that the monthly welfare payment of 25 million rials ($15) allocated for hygiene supplies no longer covers rising care costs and could lead to worsening health conditions and higher treatment expenses for people with disabilities.

In recent weeks, Iranians have told Iran International of soaring inflation, medicine shortages, sharp price increases, deepening recession, widespread job losses and disruptions caused by internet outages.

“One family cannot even find medicine for their child anymore,” one citizen said in a message to Iran International, adding that internet restrictions had cut people with mobility impairments off from their only link to society.

‘Disabled people pushed back to the Stone Age’

Some people with spinal injuries have begun reusing disposable hygiene items because of rising costs, leading to infections and secondary wounds, Behrouz Morovati, head of the Campaign for Disabled People, told Khabar Online.

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Morovati said soaring diaper prices have forced some families to use makeshift alternatives such as cloth and rags.

“Because of limited access to hygiene supplies, the normal lives of disabled people have been pushed back to the Stone Age,” he said. “Even wounds that could be controlled through regular care have deepened in many cases, increasing the risk of infection, hospitalization and irreversible complications.”

Morovati had previously warned in December 2025 that 95% of people with disabilities in Iran were living below the absolute poverty line.

Patients describe mounting pressure

Khabar Online also spoke to several people with spinal cord injuries about the impact of the economic crisis on their daily lives.

Mahmoud, a resident of Qazvin with a degree in business management, said people with spinal injuries require at least four catheters and four syringes a day.

“Each catheter now costs between 120,000 and 150,000 rials and each syringe around 50,000 rials,” he said. “Those two items alone cost nearly 30 million rials ($17) a month.”

Pressure sores, he added, require daily washing, sterilization and dressing changes, which have become increasingly expensive.

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“Some days I have to leave longer gaps between dressing changes or use non-standard supplies to control costs, but that only worsens my condition,” Mahmoud said. “Pain and fear of infection have become part of my daily life.”

Zahra Moradi, a psychology graduate living in Karaj, said women with spinal injuries face additional challenges under worsening economic conditions.

“Access to hygiene products during menstruation, bladder and bowel complications and limited access to healthcare all affect women’s overall health,” she said.

High medical costs and limited services, Moradi added, have also led to emotional and social distress, feelings of shame and declining self-confidence among women with spinal injuries.

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.

The disruptions have entered their 13th consecutive week, blocking or severely degrading access to many global online services that freelancers, software developers and content creators rely on to compete internationally, Shargh reported on Monday.

While AI tools have dramatically reduced the cost of launching new businesses worldwide, the report argued that internet restrictions inside Iran are preventing local entrepreneurs from benefiting from the shift.

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“Internet that was supposed to become the launch platform for a new generation of entrepreneurs has now turned into the biggest obstacle to establishing, growing and developing a new business,” the newspaper wrote.

Many young Iranians who could previously build businesses with little more than a laptop and free AI software are now struggling to access even basic online services because of filtering, unstable connections and rising infrastructure costs, Shargh said.

The report estimated direct economic losses from the disruption at more than 3000 trillion rials, roughly $4 billion, over a 60-day period. Daily losses for internet-dependent businesses were estimated at between $30 million and $40 million.

Tiered internet deepens pressure

The emergence of “internet pro” or tiered internet access has widened inequalities inside Iran’s digital economy by giving certain users and organizations access to higher-quality connections at sharply higher prices, added Shargh.

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Large-volume internet packages for preferred users are being sold for more than 20 million rials (around $12), the newspaper reported, adding that the model has significantly increased operating costs for small software teams already struggling with inflation and currency depreciation.

The minimum wage in Iran currently stands at just over $90 per month.

The report described the current environment as one where international internet access is increasingly treated as a luxury rather than a public utility.

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It said software companies face two immediate problems: rising infrastructure costs and the collapse of traditional digital marketing channels such as Google advertising and search visibility.

Under those conditions, businesses earning foreign currency revenue or reducing dependence on international infrastructure have become more attractive, according to the report.

AI lowers barriers but access remains limited

Advances in AI during the past two years, the report said, have sharply reduced software production costs worldwide by automating repetitive development work such as coding assistance, testing, documentation and early-stage interface design.

Tools including GitHub Copilot and AI coding assistants have increased software production speed by up to 50%, according to the report.

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But the newspaper said Iranian developers are increasingly unable to reliably access many of the same tools because of internet instability and restrictions.

Software teams, the report said, are increasingly shifting toward direct marketing methods such as SMS campaigns, webinars and messaging-platform advertising because conventional online advertising tools have become less effective under filtering conditions.