For 88 days, they could not chat with family or friends online. Their access to independent news, or to the websites they needed to run their businesses, was blocked. Simple pleasures, like streaming their favorite television shows, were denied them.<\/p>\n
Now, after what activists say was the longest nationwide internet shutdown in history, Iran\u2019s government seems to be restoring access. Many Iranians are reconnecting to the world, eager to resume the online habits most people take for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have mixed feelings. I am happy, but at the same time, I feel kind of stupid that I am happy about such a simple thing,\u201d Hamid, a 29-year-old tech worker in Tehran, said in a voice message, sent minutes after he discovered he was able to reconnect. Like many people interviewed for this article, he asked that his last name be withheld, fearing retaliation for speaking to a foreign news outlet.<\/p>\n
As someone who used the internet for both private communications and his job, Hamid said, \u201cmy entire life and work had been at a standstill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s authorities justified the shutdown on national security grounds after the United States and Israel began their war with the country on Feb. 28. A population of roughly 90 million was plunged into a near-total communication and information blackout.<\/p>\n
For many Iranians, it was not only an economic disaster, one whose impact on businesses was estimated at up to $80 million a day.<\/a> It was also psychological torment.<\/p>\n Most people could connect only to what was available in a walled-off \u201cdomestic internet,\u201d made up of a limited number of apps or websites subject to censorship by their authoritarian clerical rulers.<\/p>\n The only news most Iranians could access was on websites authorized by the state. The only online platforms they could use to communicate with loved ones across the country were surveilled by the state.<\/p>\n \u201cThe worst part was reading all this news you don\u2019t trust, with a controlled narrative, and being in a complete information black hole,\u201d said Maryam, a 39-year-old who works at an advertising company in Tehran.<\/p>\n For months, Maryam felt she did not really know what was happening in the world, or even with her own friends and family outside the city.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve just come out of prison and I\u2019m in shock,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cI have nothing to say \u2014 I\u2019m just listening to the sounds outside.\u201d<\/p>\n Not all Iranians were cut off from the world. For months, many officials and select elites were granted an open connection through what critics call \u201cwhitelisting.<\/a>\u201d Activists who campaign for internet freedom in Iran use that term to describe state efforts to essentially offer different levels of connectivity, based on people\u2019s political loyalties, their ability to pay and the need for academics and journalists to conduct research.<\/p>\n Even as some Iranians felt excitement about the spreading connectivity, it was marred by a sense of anxiety that it might not last. In part, that is because government officials seem to be at odds<\/a> over whether to let it go forward.<\/p>\n The shutdown generated a backlash among academics, journalists and business leaders. In response, President Masoud Pezeshkian, who campaigned in 2024 on the promise of loosening internet restrictions, created a working group last month to determine a new internet policy for Iran. That group decided on Tuesday to start restoring access.<\/p>\n But soon afterward, a court declared that the process should be halted while it addressed complaints about the restoration of access, according to Mizan, the judiciary\u2019s official media outlet. Nevertheless, the president\u2019s working group seemed to press ahead.<\/p>\n Sattar Hashemi, Iran\u2019s minister of communications and information, wrote on social media in support of the restoration, saying that \u201cthe people of Iran deserve free communication, a bright future and a dynamic economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Internet experts say it is too soon to know which part of Iran\u2019s leadership will prevail.<\/p>\n \u201cDifferent legal bodies are making contradictory decisions, and it\u2019s not really clear who the final decision maker is,\u201d said Fereidoon Bashar, the director of ASL19, a Toronto-based tech group focused on supporting internet freedom in Iran.<\/p>\n This shutdown was the third in a year. The first took hold for weeks after Israel, briefly joined by U.S. forces, began a 12-day war on Iran last June. A second was imposed in January, amid the eruption of nationwide anti-government protests, which were crushed by a bloody crackdown.<\/a><\/p>\n The current restoration of access has restored around 41 percent of Iran\u2019s internet traffic, according to Amir Rashidi, a cybersecurity expert at the digital rights group, Miaan.<\/p>\n Mr. Bashar said connectivity has not even reached the level that the state allowed between that January crackdown and the start of the war in February.<\/p>\n Large parts of the population, particularly poorer and less tech-savvy people, have probably seen no benefits, Mr. Bashar said: \u201cI would say the majority of the population can\u2019t get online.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, many Iranians who can are catching up on messages and emails missed during a quarter of a year without regular access. Some hoped that connectivity would soon be good enough to watch a plethora of movies and television shows they had been unable to stream for months.<\/p>\n