Iran’s internet blackout leaves public in dark, creates uneven picture of the war
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – While the war between Israel and Iran reached the brand of a week, the Iranians spent almost half of the conflict in an almost communication failure, unable to connect not only with the outside world but also with their neighbors and their loved ones across the country.
Civilians are not aware of when and where Israel will then strike, despite the Israeli forces issuing warnings through their online channels in the Persian language. When missiles land, telephone and disconnected telephone services mean not to know for hours or days if their family or friends are among the victims. This has left a lot of scrambling on various social media applications to see what is happening – once again, only an overview of life capable of reaching the internet in a nation of more than 80 million people.
Activists see this as a form of psychological warfare for a nation far too familiar with state information controls and targeted Internet closures during demonstrations and disorders.
“The Iranian regime controls the sphere of information really, really closely,” said Marwa Fatafta, director of policy and plea based in Berlin, in Digital Rights Group Access, in an interview with the Associated Press. “We know why the Iranian diet stops. It wants to control information. So their goal is quite clear.”
But this time, this occurs during a deadly conflict that broke out on June 13 with Israeli air strikes targeting nuclear and military sites, higher generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, were killed in Iran and more than 2,000 injured, according to a group based in Washington called human rights activists.
Iran retaliated by pulling 450 missiles and 1,000 drones in Israel, according to Israeli military estimates. Most were shot dead by aerial defenses on several levels of Israel, but at least 24 people in Israel were killed and hundreds of other injured. The councils of the Israeli authorities, as well as information on information 24 hours a day, flows freely and consistently to Israeli citizens, creating in the last seven days an unequal image of death and destruction brought by war.
The Iranian government argued on Friday that it was Israel who “put a war against the truth and human conscience”. In an article on X, a social media platform blocked for many of its citizens, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Israel prohibited foreign media from covering missile strikes.
The press release added that Iran would organize “global press tours to exhibit the war crimes of Israel” in the country. Iran is one of the world’s main jubs of journalists, according to the committee to protect journalists and, in the best times, journalists are faced with strict restrictions.
Friday, the Internet access group Netblocks.org reported on Friday that Iran had been disconnected from the world’s internet for 36 hours, its live measures showed that national connectivity only remained a few percentage points of normal levels. The group said that a handful of users had been able to maintain connectivity via virtual private networks.
These few chance have become lines of life for Iranians in the dark. In recent days, those who have had mobile internet access for a limited period described by using this ephemeral opportunity to make calls on behalf of others, registration of parents and older grandparents, and to locate those who leaned Tehran.
The only access to information that Iranians has is limited to websites in the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Iranian television and radio stations offer irregular updates on what is happening inside the country, rather concentrating their time on the damage caused by their strikes on Israel.
The lack of information in or outside Iran is surprising, since the progress of technology in recent decades has only brought distant conflicts to Ukraine, the Gaza band and elsewhere directly on the phone of a person all over the world.
This direct line was considered by experts as a powerful tool to move public opinion on any current conflict and potentially force the international community to take sides. It has also become a real action by world leaders under public pressure and online to act or use their power to end the fighting.
But Mehdi Yahyanejad, a key figure in the promotion of Internet freedom in Iran, said that the Islamic Republic sought to “claim an image” of force, which only portrayed the story that Israel is destroyed by sophisticated Iranian weapons which include ballistic missiles with multiple warheads.
“I think that most likely, they are just afraid of the Internet to cause mass problems in the next phase of everything that is happening,” said Yahayanejad. “I mean, a game could, of course, be planned by the Israelis through their agents on the ground, and part of this could be just a spontaneous population disorder once they have understood that the Iranian government is seriously weakened.
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The writers of the associated press Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
