Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has ordered the restoration of internet access for citizens, state media reported, ending a blackout that has kept most of the country's population cut off from the global internet for approximately 87 days. According to Iran's Ministry of Communications, the president issued a decree instructing the ministry to return internet services to the state they were in before January of this year. The precise timing and method of reconnection have not yet been announced, though earlier discussions within a government working group had suggested 5 June as a possible date.
The current blackout is the product of two overlapping crises. Authorities first suspended internet access on 8 January amid widespread anti-government protests that swept the country; the Iranian-American human rights organisation HRANA estimates the death toll from those demonstrations at least 7,000. Connectivity was gradually restored by February, only to be cut again on 28 February when US and Israeli military strikes on Iran began. Officials have consistently justified the blackouts on security grounds, arguing that foreign powers exploited social media to foment unrest and that mobile tracking technology was used by enemy forces to locate and kill Iranian military commanders in the early stages of the war.
According to NetBlocks, an organisation that monitors internet disruptions globally, Iran's blackout is the longest ever recorded in a digitally connected country — surpassing the 72-day internet shutdown that followed Myanmar's military coup in 2021. During the blockade, only a small minority of Iranians with access to expensive, advanced VPN services were able to bypass restrictions. The daily economic cost of the disruption was estimated by Iran's communications minister at around $34.5 million, highlighting the severe toll on businesses, schools and ordinary citizens.
Even before these blackouts, internet access in Iran was heavily restricted. Platforms including Instagram and messaging apps such as WhatsApp were already blocked, and Iranians had long relied on VPNs to access them. In recent months, authorities have expanded reliance on a domestic intranet — a parallel national network of state-approved websites, messaging applications, search engines and e-commerce platforms — which schools have used to deliver online curricula. A limited "white SIM card" scheme granted full international access only to diplomats, foreign mission staff and select journalists and public figures.
Why this matters: the restoration of internet access, if implemented, would mark a significant shift in Iran's information landscape at a moment of acute geopolitical pressure. The near-total blackout meant that news of the anti-government protests, the scale of violence against demonstrators, and the ongoing war with the US and Israel reached the outside world only in fragments. Reconnection could allow independent reporting to resume — but Iran's enduring censorship infrastructure means that "access" will remain a relative term for most citizens.