More than 75 days after Iran imposed sweeping internet restrictions, tens of millions of Iranians remain cut off from the outside world. The blackout has severed ordinary communications, disrupted online businesses and deepened the sense of isolation inside a country already battered by war, sanctions, inflation and a growing shortage of hard currency.<\/p>\n
Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, says she found in a 2022 report that around 11 million Iranians had online businesses, including many women seeking financial independence through handicrafts, catering, Instagram sales or influencer work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis internet shutdown has gravely impacted people,\u201d she told the Eye for Iran podcast, adding that Iranian officials themselves have said 20% of the country\u2019s 30 million-strong workforce has been affected.<\/p>\n
Iranian e-commerce platforms, ride-hailing services, streaming platforms and online retailers have all been hit, she said, with hundreds of jobs lost as a result of the blackout.<\/p>\n
Dagres said the shutdown also reflects Tehran\u2019s effort to control the information space, not only its stated security concerns. \u201cIt\u2019s really not about national security. It\u2019s about who you decide gets control of the internet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A self-inflicted economic wound<\/p>\n
Siamak Javadi, an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Texas, said the blackout is not just a political tool but an economic shock inflicted by the state on an already fragile economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Iranian economy was already in shambles, and you\u2019re inflicting even more damage to the economy by shutting down the internet,\u201d he told the podcast.<\/p>\n
Javadi put the economic damage in starker terms. Citing Iranian estimates, he said each minute of internet shutdown costs the economy around $1.5 million in direct losses, or about $80 million a day.<\/p>\n
But he said the indirect costs are even more damaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kills jobs. It kills opportunities. It kills planning,\u201d he said. \u201cIf there was any project that they were thinking about undertaking, those projects are going to basically shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a developing economy, Javadi said, small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of economic life. Shutting down the internet in the middle of a currency crisis and wartime economic shock, he said, amounts to \u201cdeliberately killing the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a deliberate, sober decision to kill the economy and basically keep people to fight for their basic necessities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The blockade clock<\/p>\n
While the internet blackout is damaging the economy from within, Javadi said the US blockade is squeezing the Islamic Republic from the outside by limiting access to oil revenue and foreign currency.<\/p>\n
He said Iran\u2019s economy was already weakened before the war by structural problems including corruption, fiscal deficits, capital flight, money-printing and a long-running depreciation of the rial.<\/p>\n
The war, he said, added a major supply-side shock and sharply reduced Tehran\u2019s ability to rely on oil income to defend its currency or finance the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened during the war, on top of all of these preexisting conditions, is that basically overnight, Iran\u2019s access to oil revenue kind of evaporated,\u201d Javadi said.<\/p>\n
He said the blockade is costing Iran an estimated $450 million a day, which he rounded to roughly $12 billion to $15 billion a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s substantial for an economy that is like between $350 billion to $400 billion GDP,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Javadi argued that the Islamic Republic is \u201cdefinitely on the clock,\u201d especially as oil exports become more limited, more costly and less efficient. With reduced access to oil revenue, limited tax income and small businesses crippled by the blackout, he said the government may eventually struggle to finance even its security apparatus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey may not be able to even pay their own security forces and their institution of suppression,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Still, he warned that the regime does not operate like a normal government. It may allow ordinary economic life to collapse so long as it can preserve the core institutions needed to stay in power.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey may run out of money to run a business in a normal way. But it doesn\u2019t matter to them,\u201d Javadi said. \u201cAs long as they can finance their security forces, they will hold on to power.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that could mean cutting back pensions or leaving ordinary people unable to afford basic necessities while the state prioritizes its coercive machinery.<\/p>\n
But the question is not only how long Tehran can keep funding the state under blockade. It is also what kind of economy Iranians are being forced into: one more isolated, more monitored and increasingly cut off from the outside world.<\/p>\n
Permanent isolation<\/p>\n
Dagres warned that the internet shutdown may be moving Iran toward a more permanent model of isolation.<\/p>\n
She said Iran\u2019s domestic internet infrastructure is already functioning in parts of daily life, including banking, ride-hailing and local messaging apps. But those services are monitored, she said, and cannot replace access to the outside world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not really hyperbolic anymore\u201d for Iranians to compare the situation to North Korea, Dagres said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis seems like this might become the new normal, where only an elite few will have access to the outside world, and everybody else will be living behind this digital wall,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That wall, she added, is devastating not only psychologically but economically.<\/p>\n
For both experts, the crisis facing Iran is therefore not simply the result of outside pressure. The US blockade may be choking off state revenue, but Tehran\u2019s own blackout is choking the businesses, workers and families the state claims to protect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 75 days after Iran imposed sweeping internet restrictions, tens of millions of Iranians remain cut off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,67,63,60,61,64,58,62,59,65,49,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-117195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-iran","9":"tag-iran-and-china","10":"tag-iran-covid","11":"tag-iran-economy","12":"tag-iran-government","13":"tag-iran-media-iran-and-the-united-states","14":"tag-iran-news","15":"tag-iran-nuclear","16":"tag-iran-politics","17":"tag-iran-us","18":"tag-middle-east","19":"tag-us-sanctions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116586542815157123","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}