By Pishtaz | 2025-01-15

In order to maintain its control over the Iranian people, the Iranian regime has continued its stranglehold on internet access, demonstrating it would rather reap covert profits than empower the people it governs.

"Tens of thousands of foreign-based websites are filtered, including news sites and major social media services," per the "Freedom in the World 2024" report.

"Satellite dishes are banned, and Persian-language broadcasts from outside the country are regularly jammed," said the report by Freedom House, which advocates for democracy, political freedom and human rights.

Police periodically raid private homes and confiscate satellite dishes, it said, and the regime has attempted to block Starlink -- a satellite internet constellation operated by a subsidiary of SpaceX -- via international regulatory channels.

Yet Iranians continue to install satellite terminals, and Iran now has more than 30,000 Starlink satellite internet subscribers, bne IntelliNews reported January 6.

"Despite state-led enforcement measures ... a significant portion of the population, including legislators themselves, has transitioned to satellite technology for news and entertainment, bypassing state-controlled narratives," said Ali Alfoneh, senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

Communities are pooling resources to pay for Starlink access, the Tehran E-Commerce Association said in its January report, choosing this over state-controlled networks that offer limited service at inflated prices.

Regime profits from VPNs

As they access the internet, many Iranians rely on the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to mask their location and online activity.

This has created a lucrative marketplace for VPN providers (approximately $900 million in annual turnover, per Iran International) -- some of which are understood to be directly or indirectly controlled by the Iranian regime.

In addition to providing a source of revenue, these enable the regime to monitor the online activity of those using VPN services it controls.

State authorities instructed internet service providers to increase prices by up to 40% in December 2023, while subsidizing domestic platforms that share user data with the government, according to Freedom House.

In February 2024, the regime tightened restrictions by requiring government licenses for VPN use, effectively criminalizing unauthorized circumvention tools.

"To access any domestic services in Iran, such as shopping on Iranian websites, accessing bank accounts, or visiting news sites, users need to use VPNs," Canada-based technology journalist Mehdi Saremi-Far told Pishtaz.

Iranian internet users must "essentially disguise themselves so that the government can't detect they are connecting to the internet from outside the National Information Network," he said.

"Instead, it should appear as if they are inside Iran. For this, specific types of VPNs must be used," he added. "It is strongly advised not to use VPNs developed by the Islamic Republic of Iran to bypass filtering."

-- Maryam Manzoori contributed to this report.