After days of protests: Iran goes offline after internet blockade
For days, Iran has again been shaken by protests, this time with the participation of important traders. Now the internet appears to be being blocked.
(Image: Collab Media/Shutterstock.com)
After days of protests, Iranian authorities have apparently begun to block the internet across the country and in the capital, Tehran. This was made public by Netblocks. The organization specializes in detecting such internet outages. Other publicly accessible data sources also show connection losses to the Islamic Republic, which has been shaken by increasingly violent protests against the ruling regime for days. Netblocks believes that the internet blockade will significantly hinder reporting from the country and communication there. It is to be feared that the rulers will use the digital blackout to crack down even harder on the demonstrations.
The latest wave of protests began almost two weeks ago. It was triggered by a sudden drop in the value of the national currency, the Rial, amidst an already massive economic crisis. In the capital, Tehran, angry traders spontaneously took to the streets, and many shops were closed. Observers had pointed out that the protests that led to the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic more than 40 years ago were also decisively supported by the important bazaars. The protests have now spread to other parts of the country. On Thursday of this week, for example, numerous videos circulating on social networks show deserted shopping streets in the Kurdish regions of Iran.
Videos by heise
The internet blockades apparently began on Thursday in the western province of Kermanshah, where Netblocks first registered connection failures. According to reports received by the dpa news agency, mobile internet in some major cities is now also affected. New protest calls published by Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah overthrown in 1979, were also suspected as the reason. The last nationwide internet blackout in Iran was only about seven months ago. When Israel and the Islamic Republic fired missiles at each other for days, the regime in Tehran imposed an almost complete digital blackout.
(mho)
