Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian has ordered the restoration of international internet access, moving to end a months-long blackout that has cut most of the country off from the global web since the war with Israel and the US broke out.
It follows a vote by the Special Task Force for Cyberspace Management, which backed returning access to prewar conditions after nearly three months of severe restrictions.
Monitoring group NetBlocks said there was a “partial restoration” on Tuesday after 88 days of near-total blackout on the national network, showing connectivity had risen from close to zero to around 35 per cent of typical levels.
However, Mr Pezeshkian's push to restore internet was cast into doubt as a court suspended his task force's operations following the "filing of complaints".
Iranian media said the decision still requires some final procedural steps and there is no clear time frame for when full internet access will return. Controls are expected to remain in place even after restoration.
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said in televised remarks that services could be restored "in the coming days".
Ehsan Chitsaz, Iran's Deputy Minister of Information and Communication Technology, said Mr Pezeshkian had issued a decree to reopen access, framing the internet as something that had to be returned to the public.
“We believed the internet is the people’s right and must be returned to them,” Mr Chitsaz said in remarks shared on social media.
The internet was cut after the outbreak of war between Iran and Israel and the US on February 28. There have since been more than 2,000 hours of disruption, with most of Iran’s 90 million population pushed off the global internet. Instead, users were routed on to a tightly controlled domestic network that kept basic services such banking and delivery apps running, but blocked much of the outside web.
First Vice President
Access was, however, largely restricted, with connectivity available only to a narrow group of users through state-approved systems, while the vast majority remained disconnected.
“The internet has definitely been one of the main problems for some time now,” a Tehran-based businessman told The National. “The issue of class-based internet or so-called white SIM cards, which only give internet to some people, has also become disturbing and made people really annoyed.”
For months, most international platforms were unreachable without VPNs or workarounds, while access for those permitted online was selectively granted through paid “Internet Pro” packages for some businesses and the white SIM cards issued to officials and approved users.
The task force is led by First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, who said the restrictions had gone too far.
“We cannot say we are helping people while not trusting them and shutting down the internet,” he said. Blocking access entirely was not a sustainable answer to misuse, he added.
Officials said the restoration would return connectivity to “pre-January 2026 conditions”, describing the move as a “smart and law-abiding” reopening.
NetBlocks, which monitors global digital governance and internet access, has described the outage as the longest on record for any country.
It said internet connectivity remained cut in Iran on Tuesday, with the “digital blackout now having entered its 88th day, surpassing 2,088 hours of isolation from the outside world”.
"Metrics confirm the shutdown currently remains in effect despite the President's order yesterday to restore access," it said in a post on X.
an Iranian digital rights activist in the US
Mahdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian digital rights activist in the US, said the pledges to enable internet access came as Tehran expected to reach a preliminary deal with the US over ending the conflict. But he was not convinced it would mean fair access for all.
"My guess is that the Iranian government is expecting the deal soon," he told The National. "They will lift the internet shutdown to some degree after the deal, most likely to an even more restricted version.”
There had been pressure from some parties in Iran to throttle access further before the war, he said. The three-month shutdown has set a precedent, he added.
"They [the hardliners] were trying to restrict it before but there was certain political resistance," Mr Yahyanejad said. "Now that they were able to shut it down for 90 days, they will use the opportunity to implement those extra restrictions."
Even before the war, Iran already maintained heavy filtering of websites and social media, but the scale of this year’s restrictions marked a sharper break – a near-total separation from the global internet for extended periods.
The restrictions did not appear to affect Iran-linked cyber groups. Last month, Handala, a hacking group linked to Tehran, said it sent threatening WhatsApp messages to US Marines in the Gulf and to Israelis. The group has also claimed responsibility for hacking the personal email and cloud accounts of FBI director Kash Patel and compromising systems belonging to Stryker, which employs thousands worldwide.
The President’s move now signals a reversal in approach but for most Iranians the question is how soon, and how fully, connection to the outside world actually comes back.
