After more than 2,000 hours of government-imposed connectivity blackouts, there were signs on Tuesday that Iran\u2019s internet is coming back\u2014at least at very low levels.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s more than 90 million citizens have been without internet<\/a> for the overwhelming majority of 2026, between the current blackout that began on February 28, when Israel and the United States attacked the country<\/a>, and a previous internet shutdown enforced after widespread protests in January. The reconnection appears to have been ordered by officials in Iran\u2019s government\u2014but could only be temporary.<\/p>\n Though some Iranian networks appeared to be connecting to the global internet on Tuesday, researchers cautioned that the level of access was far below even the partial restoration that Tehran allowed at the end of January and throughout February\u2014and it was drastically below Iran\u2019s typical baseline of global internet connectivity from December 2025. Internet monitoring experts at Kentik<\/a>, NetBlocks<\/a>, and Cloudflare<\/a> began documenting the partial restoration of connectivity in Iran beginning in the early afternoon local time on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do see some traffic coming from Iran,\u201d says Amir Rashidi, a cybersecurity expert with the internet freedom organization Miaan Group. \u201cSome providers have come back online, but it is still too early to say exactly what will happen. After the January protests, some providers were also reconnected, but around 50 percent of the country\u2019s traffic remained down.\u201d<\/p>\n Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kentik, says, \u201cWe\u2019re not seeing much change for the mobile networks.\u201d Instead, he says, some fixed-line providers have appeared to be restoring their services, with the Telecommunication Company of Iran\u2019s fiber-optic service around Tehran showing<\/a> the \u201cbiggest gain.\u201d<\/p>\n At the start of January, the Iranian regime entirely shut down internet connectivity as the state killed thousands of protesters who took to the streets demanding improvements to economic conditions in the country. The government then entirely cut connectivity again at the end of February when the United States and Israel went to war in Iran\u2014leaving millions of Iranians unable to contact their families, damaging the local economy, and prohibiting news and video footage about the war from getting into and out of the country. The limited reconnection of internet services on Tuesday comes as the US government continues to negotiate with Iran about a permanent end to the war.<\/p>\n Over the last decade, the Iranian regime has undertaken a massive project to control connectivity and censor content in the country while also building out a national intranet meant to essentially replace the global internet. This includes homegrown, surveillance-heavy<\/a> tech such as search engines, messaging apps, and ride-hailing platforms<\/a>. In practice, though, the regime\u2019s digital mechanisms for control are often wielded as brute-force tools rather than precision instruments. It is unclear<\/a> whether this is the result of technical limitations, political instability, or both.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council seemingly ordered the current internet shutdown at the end of February as the war with the US started. A different group formed by current Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian\u2014known as the Special Headquarters for Organizing and Governing the Country’s Cyberspace\u2014reportedly ordered connectivity restoration on Monday, though the move drew a legal challenge in Iran\u2019s High Court. Nevertheless, the Iranian communications minister said<\/a> that the reconnection would move forward per the president\u2019s order, and that the process is underway<\/a> to restore connectivity within 24 hours.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we are seeing now is an increase in traffic from Iran, but we need to wait and see the outcome of the power struggle,\u201d Miaan Group\u2019s Rashidi says. \u201cChallenging the president\u2019s order in court, given Iran\u2019s political culture, was in a way a humiliation of Pezeshkian. So we should wait and see how this power struggle plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After more than 2,000 hours of government-imposed connectivity blackouts, there were signs on Tuesday that Iran\u2019s internet is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[2970,1445,10600,34,37,49,81,4308,36],"class_list":["post-132147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-censorship","tag-internet","tag-internet-access","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-politics","tag-protests","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116642237936558913","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132147","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=132147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}