Iran's latest internet blackout is one of the most severe government-imposed digital shutdowns ever, experts say.
“It's past the 240-hour mark and it's quite severe,” said Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, which tracks digital governance and monitors online access.
The internet blackout, imposed amid US and Israeli strikes on February 28, is the second faced by Iranians this year. The first was in January, when Iran's rulers sought to blunt the spread of demonstrations throughout the country.
The only exemptions from the blackout, according to NetBlocks and technology experts, appear to be high-ranking Iranian officials and state-run media outlets. They are posting prolifically on social media, while the rest of the country remains without internet access.
Mr Toker said sources within Iran believe this blackout is being enforced with significantly more aggression than previous internet cuts.
“An increasingly Orwellian environment is emerging as telcos threaten users who try to connect to the global internet with legal action,” a social media post from NetBlocks read.
Mr Toker said that although Iran had made a point of broadcasting pro-regime demonstrations in recent days, the continued blocking of internet access to 99 per cent of the country likely speaks to the situation on the ground.
“The regime doesn't seem to have that confidence for its own people,” he continued. “The fact that they've deemed it [an internet blackout] necessary really stands out."
The NetBlocks director added that because Iranian officials have already cut off internet access over the past decade, they are more proficient than other countries at carrying out the process.
“No other country has shut off access at such scale in so many instances and for such a duration,” he explained. Only Myanmar rivals Iran for blocking the internet within borders, he added.
Mohammed Soliman, a technology analyst and senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, has been tracking Iran's internet crackdowns for several months.
“With this latest outage, Iranians have spent roughly one third of 2026 in complete digital darkness,” he said. Mr Soliman said he viewed it as a digital siege that has been “weaponised against civilians in wartime”.
Mr Soliman, author of West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East, said Iran's ruling regime has become proficient at providing internet access to a select few, while largely cracking down on alternative access methods.
“Ordinary people wake to failed virtual private networks (VPNs), and enforced silence,” he explained.
Cloudflare, which also monitors internet cuts around the world, said that while most of Iran remains offline, it was seeing some limited online traffic.
“Small amounts of Web & DNS traffic are still getting through, and IPv4 routes remain available, suggesting some users and sites are allowlisted for access,” a recent Cloudflare social media post read.
Although not the newest internet protocol, IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) remains the main standard for enabling online communication.
Its continued availability reinforces the idea that Iranian authorities have made sure that a select few in the country still have internet access.
