About 90 million Iranian residents are still unable to use the internet due to a blackout imposed by the country's regime on February 28.
Iranian officials cut off internet access for more than 99 per cent of the country shortly after US and Israeli missiles struck the country at the end of February.
While authorities officially enforced a near-total shutdown, new connectivity data suggests many Iranians have faced severe internet disruption for far longer, with restrictions stretching back to early January.
The first major blackout of 2026 began on January 8 as anti-regime protests spread across several cities. Iranian officials said the shutdown was necessary to counter disinformation, though critics argued it was also designed to stop footage of demonstrations reaching the outside world.
Although Tehran later claimed internet access had been restored, internet governance groups and residents told The National that service in many areas remained unreliable and heavily restricted.
The second and far more severe blackout, imposed at the end of February, cut off more than 99 per cent of the country shortly after the first wave of missile strikes.
The result is that ordinary Iranians have had internet access for just 6.5 per cent of 2026 so far, according to connectivity estimates and monitoring groups.
“The general public have now been largely cut off from the global internet for 70 per cent of the year 2026 to date,” internet monitoring organisation NetBlocks said on Wednesday. Some residents reported having no meaningful connection since the first shutdown in January, it added.
Despite the restrictions, some limited access appears to remain available through Iran’s heavily controlled National Information Network, a domestic intranet system that allows access to state-approved sites and services.
Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, told The National that a small number of “whitelisted” Sim cards still appear capable of accessing the a handful of state-sanctioned websites. This brings little comfort to millions of Iranian business owners whose income relied on internet traffic.
“Most people can only access sites and services hosted on the country’s national internet, the NIN,” he said.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of Foundation for Defence of Democracies think tank’s Iran division, echoed that notion, pointing out that during internet blackouts Iranian officials claim that internet access is readily available, but in reality it’s a heavily diluted version of online access.
“This thing is sometimes jokingly called the halal internet,” he said
“It's basically the national intranet versus the actual internet,” he explained, referring to a closed off version of websites approved by Iranian officials.
Cloudflare Radar, which also monitors global internet traffic, recently addressed the internet developments in Iran.
"Increased allowlisting of external sites, and the availability of 'Internet Pro' access has driven nominal increases in traffic visible in the latter half of April," Cloudflare Radar posted to its social media account on X, cautioning that most of the country was still without internet access.
Responses to Cloudflare Radar's post sought to emphasize that 'Internet Pro' was a superficial attempt to blur the reality of what is really happening in the country.
"Internet Pro is nothing but digital apartheid," one of several X users posted.
Meanwhile, efforts to smuggle Starlink satellite internet terminals into Iran have continued throughout the year. Multiple media reports, including a May investigation by the BBC, highlighted attempts by activists and underground networks to distribute the banned low-Earth orbit internet devices across the country.
However, analysts say even large-scale smuggling operations are unlikely to restore national-level connectivity, particularly because the devices remain illegal in Iran and require clear satellite access and power infrastructure to function effectively.
