12 Ways Iran Is At War Over The Internet

If the Internet is anything, it’s a place to express yourself freely. And if there’s one thing the Iranian regime fears, it’s freedom of expression.

Take for example the case of a handful of young Iranians in Tehran, who like half the world, from Gaza to Somaliland, danced through the streets to cover Pharrell’s “Happy” music video. The Iranian regime was having none of it. The people you see in the video were arrested, forced to confess to their “crimes” on state TV, and thrown in jail.

Even though the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has his own Facebook page, the average Iranian can’t access Facebook in the country.

In May, a judge in Iran ordered the founder of Facebook to appear in Iranian court to face charges on privacy violations. This wasn’t the first Facebook-related arrest in the country. In May 2014, Iran sentenced 8 Facebook users to a combined 123 years in prison for insulting the Supreme Leader.

In 2012, the Supreme Leader launched his Instagram account to disseminate his glowering selfies to the world. In 2014, a court in Iran ordered it be blocked for everyone else.

Iran blocked Twitter in 2009 when Iranians used it to protest the sham presidential election that saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad steal another term.

Last year, recently elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted a response to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, saying that Iranians have the “right” to access whatever info they want. Apparently that means any info except tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram photos, and so on.

Iran’s government thinks chatting with your friends and reading news online will result in “improper” activities. Their solution? Ban all the sites. Almost half of the world’s 500 most popular sites are blocked in Iran.

Internet speeds in Iran are some of the slowest in the world. The Iranian regime keeps the speeds low on purpose to control what Iranians can see and access. The day before the Iranian Presidential election in June 2013, the government throttled the Internet by over 80%, which rendered the Internet virtually useless.

The regime’s ultimate goal with the Internet is to cut Iranians off entirely from the rest of the online world by building an “Iran-only” Internet. This “Internet” would prevent Iranians from accessing anything outside their country.


But Iranians and groups outside the country are fighting back against the Iranian regime in clever ways online.

Iranian women have posted photos of themselves without headscarves on social media using the hashtag #mystealthyfreedom. This is in response to the strict dress code enforced by the notorious Basij “morality police”. The #mystealthyfreedom Facebook page has over 500,000 likes.

#MustSeeIran was created to promote tourism in Iran, but human rights groups hijacked the government’s social media campaign to show instead how the Iranian government is trampling human rights.

Using VPNs and other censorship circumvention tools, some Iranians are able to access Western websites and speak to the outside world.

The Iranian government has caught on and is quashing use of popular circumvention software, like Psiphon. The video above shows how the regime throttles the Internet around key events, like the 2013 presidential election.


The people of Iran are doing their best, but there’s only so much they can do from inside the country.

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