Concerns intensified after a former head of Iran\u2019s state broadcaster said Tehran had imported Chinese equipment for a \u201cpermanent internet shutdown,\u201d while millions of Iranians endure what monitoring group NetBlocks says is now the world\u2019s longest ongoing nationwide blackout.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He said the Islamic Republic had imported Chinese equipment for \u201cpermanently cutting off the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spectre of digital control<\/p>\n
Laura Edelson, assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University, said the closest comparison may be China\u2019s internet crackdown in Xinjiang after unrest there in 2009, when authorities isolated the Uyghur-majority region from the outside internet for 10 months.<\/p>\n
\u201cFunctionally, for the vast majority of the population, they were effectively cut off entirely from the outside world,\u201d Edelson said.<\/p>\n
She said China\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis centralized model is one that a lot of other countries, including and almost especially Iran, has been moving toward,\u201d she told Iran International.<\/p>\n
She added that turning off the internet forever \u201cis not useful,\u201d meaning authoritarian governments increasingly favor adaptable systems that can tighten restrictions during politically sensitive moments and loosen them when economic activity is needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran\u2019s government doesn\u2019t trust its own people,\u201d Edelson said. \u201cThe vast majority of people don’t support the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf 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\u2019t reach \u2014 that\u2019s a set of internet censorship and surveillance systems that I would be more afraid of personally,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Can Tehran pull it off?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Meizlish told Iran International.<\/p>\n
He said China\u2019s own internet system gives Tehran both a blueprint and a commercial partner.<\/p>\n
According to Meizlish, Iran\u2019s centralized control over internet infrastructure already gives authorities the ability to regulate what information enters or leaves the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we could actually see is Iran building out its own internet,\u201d he said, \u201cso that the people of Iran are only able to view what the government wants them to view.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said technology transfers between Beijing and Tehran should increasingly be viewed through the lens of human rights abuses and digital repression.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an argument to be made that this form of censorship constitutes a wide-scale human rights abuse,\u201d Meizlish said.<\/p>\n
But Amin Sabeti, founder of cybersecurity research group CERTFA, cautioned that Iran still lacks many of the domestic technological capabilities that made China\u2019s censorship system possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Iranian regime imports the technology; it doesn’t own the technology,\u201d Sabeti said.<\/p>\n
Unlike China, he said, Iran lacks strong domestic alternatives to many global services and remains heavily dependent on foreign infrastructure and technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn China, there isn’t a need for Gmail because they have good services in terms of email,\u201d Sabeti said. \u201cIn Iran, there isn’t any proper email service.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t think it will happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Concerns intensified after a former head of Iran\u2019s state broadcaster said Tehran had imported Chinese equipment for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,801,166405,166402,166400,1570,166403,166398,166401,166399,166404,129,3,21,19,22,20,25,3667,24],"class_list":["post-674333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-iran","tag-iran-and-china","tag-iran-covid","tag-iran-economy","tag-iran-government","tag-iran-media-iran-and-the-united-states","tag-iran-news","tag-iran-nuclear","tag-iran-politics","tag-iran-us","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-sanctions","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}