The Longest Internet Shutdown in Human History

Since January, repeated and sustained disruptions have reduced Iran’s connectivity to a fraction of normal levels, leaving millions technically online but unable to communicate beyond national borders

If you speak with Iranians in the diaspora these days, you will notice something strange: people have started to count time differently.

Not in days or weeks, but in missed phone calls.

“How long has it been since you last spoke to your parents?”
“Two weeks.”
“Three.”
“…I don’t know anymore.”

Some parents in Iran spend money they cannot afford—money meant for groceries that are becoming more expensive by the hour—on costly phone packages to call their children abroad, only for the connection to last a few seconds. Every word carries weight. You try to hold on to each sentence while keeping your voice steady, aware the line could drop at any moment.

Others manage to scrape together enough for a single gigabyte of internet—just enough for a message, a voice note, some proof that they are still there.

It is nearing the end of April 2026, and Iran has experienced more than twelve weeks of severe internet disruption since the beginning of this year.

What is happening in Iran is often described as an “internet shutdown.” That sounds like a switch being flipped on and off. But what’s really happening is something more precise. Iran’s National Information Network (NIN), also known as Iran’s intranet system, is designed to ensure the country remains digitally connected, even if cut off from the world.

What Iranians are left with is a network that appears to be online but is not connected to anything beyond Iran’s borders. Rather than serving as public infrastructure, the internet in Iran is wielded as a tool of control.

The first shutdown phase began on January 8, during widespread anti-regime protests in which thousands of innocent civilians were massacred. Around twenty days of severe internet disruption followed.

Then came the second phase.

At the end of February, after regional escalation, connectivity was cut again—this time to near-zero levels. In some places, traffic fell to 1 or 2% of normal usage. Fifty days followed. By April, the shutdown had continued for twelve weeks of continuous or repeated blackout conditions.

This is the longest nationwide internet shutdown ever recorded. But even this description is slightly misleading.

While most Iranians remain cut off, a small segment of society is being offered something new: monitored access. Known as “Internet Pro,” it is not open or universal and requires identification, approval, and registration; it comes at a high cost and is limited, controlled, and selectively granted.

Certain groups—business elites, approved professionals, and select institutions—are granted restricted access to the global internet, while the rest are confined to the NIN. The result is a layered, class-based system where access itself becomes a privilege reserved for those willing to comply with the regime.

The NIN was not built overnight. It has been tested, refined, and honed for years. What began as an infrastructure project is now being used a political cudgel.

Every connection can be blocked and monitored, and in moments of crisis, the internet is treated less as a means of communication and more as a security risk. It is shut down not because it stops working, but because it works exactly as intended.

These shutdowns follow a clear pattern and coincide with spreading protests, escalating violence, or moments when the state needs time to regroup. Restricting access reduces visibility, which in turn limits accountability and makes violence easier to carry out.

Inside Iran, people are arrested for using satellite internet. Shops are seized, citizens detained, and equipment confiscated. Using global internet access without permission is treated as a crime threatening national security. At the same time, the regime is busy steadily producing propaganda for the outside world.

Videos of armed women framed as “empowerment,” children in staged military displays, and pink patrol vehicles filled with women saluting with weapons all project a single message: the system is intact and supported from within. But behind that performance, ordinary people cannot even send a message.

Why would a regime need to censor its citizens if it has widespread support?

While all this is happening, I sit in Germany watching a political talk show called Maybrit Illner. The topic: Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.

One of the guests is Thorsten Frei, head of the Federal Chancellery under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. He says we are dealing with a criminal regime. And then comes the sentence that drives me mad:

“Regime change cannot be organized from the outside. It must come from within the population itself.”

It sounds reasonable until you think about it. How does a population organize without communication? How do people coordinate without the internet?

Imagine how this sounds to someone inside Iran trying to speak out—stepping outside each day to armed patrols, loudspeakers, uniforms, and guns, knowing there is no internet, no way to reach others, no way to organize, and no clear sense of what is happening even a street away.

Against that reality, calls for “change from within” ring hollow. It is difficult to see how people are expected to organize under these conditions, though it is far easier to make such arguments from a studio in Germany, where they carry no immediate cost and require no action.

I started blogging in Iran a few years before the Green Movement of 2009. Back then, we used dial-up internet—the sound of connection that everyone from my generation still remembers. Slow, unstable, but revolutionary.

For the first time, we could speak beyond borders. Not just to each other, but to the world. Years before Instagram, WhatsApp, or Telegram, we wrote blogs, documented what was happening, and created a space for Iranian voices outside state control.

After being expelled from university because of my beliefs, other expelled students and I wrote letters to ministries and published them online. We documented our dadkhahi—our search for justice—through blogs.

What is taking shape in Iran is not exactly a closed system like North Korea, but something more adaptive. The internet still exists, but access is switched on or off depending on political need.

This extends beyond periodic shutdowns. War, economic strain, and digital restrictions now reinforce each other, tightening control and further isolating Iranian society from the outside world.

Within this system, satellite internet has taken on a different role. It is no longer a convenience or upgrade, but one of the few remaining ways to bypass state-controlled infrastructure. At scale, it offers a rare form of independent access.

That access, however, carries risk. Users can be arrested if caught. Equipment is costly and often obtained through informal channels. Businesses that provide access are shut down, and users can be tracked through signals, devices, and digital activity.

Even so, people continue to find ways to connect.

Because the need to be heard is stronger than the fear of the consequences.

This is the point where the international community has to decide what it actually stands for. If access to information is a fundamental right, then it cannot stop at borders where it becomes politically inconvenient. If freedom of speech matters, then it must also apply to those who are systematically cut off from speaking.

Statements are not enough. What is needed is infrastructure.

Satellite internet is a technical and political solution. It bypasses state control, restores communication, and enables people to organize, document, and speak.

Without it, calls for “change from within” are abstract and feckless. It is a demand made in full knowledge that the means to act have been deliberately taken away.

You cannot ask people to change their country while denying them the ability to communicate. If there is serious intent to support the Iranian people, expanding independent internet access should already be underway at scale. In the meantime, Iranians will continue to measure time in missed calls, cut connections, and messages that never go through.

A few seconds on the phone. A single voice note. Proof of life.

The longest internet shutdown in human history must end. The future of the Iranian people depends on it.

For more on how Iranians are using Starlink to communicate with the outside world, check out the interview below:

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