Iran has partially restored internet and mobile phone access after a complete shutdown amid mass protests, but overall access remains extremely low, Russian media reported on January 17, citing the Mehr news agency. Three days earlier, the British newspaper The Guardian claimed that Iran was preparing to shut down the national segment of the internet. While China is today a prime example of digital isolation and its impact on society, Islamic history also remembers that periods of forced isolation often became spiritual crucibles from which the community emerged renewed.
The Iranian government imposed a complete internet shutdown on January 8, seeking to suppress mass protests sparked by the collapse of the national currency. Elon Musk provided protesters with free access to the banned Starlink satellite service to bypass the blocking. On January 18, the Telegram channel of the official Iranian news agency IRNA (the only available source of information on events in the Islamic Republic at the time of writing the article) published statements in Russian by legal scholar Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei. He accused the US administration and Donald Trump personally of direct responsibility for orchestrating the unrest in Iran and called for their prosecution for interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.
That same day, the aforementioned Telegram channel published reports from business talks between the Iranian and Iraqi foreign ministers, as well as photographs of a meeting between thousands of people from various walks of life and Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. No internet shutdown was announced. However, on January 14, Iranian authorities released a list of national online services. This is a kind of whitelist, according to those invited to The Guardian experts – Iranian digital rights specialist Amir Rashidi and Kentik's director of internet analysis, Doug Madori – should finalize the country's transition to a fully autonomous "clean internet".
This step marks the final stage of a long-in-the-works digital sovereignty project: instead of global platforms, users will be offered domestic versions of search engines, maps, messaging apps, and streaming services. In effect, this means creating a closed national intranet system, cutting off the population from the global internet and, consequently, from President Trump's calls for protesters to continue their actions and seize government organs. It is important to note that the unrest has resulted in casualties among both security forces and protesters. The Iranian vice president has reported a high death toll.
The technical implementation of the digital project is based on a "layered internet" model, whereby the government apparatus will have access to the global network, while for ordinary citizens, the internet will be transformed into a controlled local network. This approach will place Iran among the most closed digital regimes and constitutes a large-scale social experiment. Given the lack of official statements, The Guardian's report appears to be speculation, but the websites of long-standing Iranian publications such as Kayhan and Ettelaat remain inaccessible to Russian users.
If Iran does shut down its national internet segment, it's worth remembering that forced isolation has many positive consequences throughout history, particularly in the history of Islam. There, periods of solitude and isolation have often become powerful catalysts for spiritual and social renewal. Prophetic revelation descended in the cavernous silence of Hira; the Prophet's greatest night journey occurred during the "Year of Sorrow"; and the exodus from hostile Mecca enabled the founding of the first Islamic state in Medina. Even times of profound decline have sparked powerful intellectual and spiritual renaissance. History shows that forced isolation from the familiar world is not a dead end for the Islamic tradition, but a crucible in which faith is tempered and a new future is forged.
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Photo: Al-Qatar (Arche)/Creative Commons 3.0