Iran 2026: 17 years later, same mistake

It was a Saturday in 2015, perhaps 2016. I was still “normal” back then, still convinced that technology was inherently positive, potentially revolutionary, still naive enough to believe that the internet liberated by definition. I was browsing books at Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow—one of my little guilty pleasures since I landed in Scotland—when I came across “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom” by Evgeny Morozov. I picked up the book, went downstairs, sat in the in-house café and started reading. And I went into crisis. His thesis demolished, piece by piece, the narrative of the “Twitter Revolution” of 2009 in Iran. In the book, Morozov cited an analysis by Golnaz Esfandiari, an Iranian journalist for Foreign Policy, who had done something simple but, these days, almost revolutionary: journalism (if you're laughing at this point, you're good people...). She had looked at where the tweets with #iranelection actually came from during the 2009 protests. And the answer? From the West. Not from Iran. Wait, what? Yes, exactly. It was theater. Western self-celebration masquerading as solidarity.

I remember closing the book with an unpleasant feeling. Morozov doesn't give you the satisfaction of choosing a side in history. He forces you to see that technology amplifies everything—the good and the bad, freedom and control. And that authoritarian regimes have a very steep learning curve, unfortunately. Fifteen years later, the young people in Tehran are trying again: they're taking to the streets trying to overthrow the regime. In the West, I thought we had learned our lesson, that we would stop projecting our technological fantasies onto real protest movements. Obviously, I was wrong.

Iran 2009, or when Twitter (didn't) overthrow a regime

To understand why Iran 2026 is déjà-vu, we need to go back 17 years. June 2009. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is re-elected president of Iran with 63% of the vote. The opposition—led by Hossein Mousavi—cries fraud. Millions take to the streets. Tehran fills with green. It's the explosion of the “Green Movement.” And here begins the narrative that would define a decade. CNN headlines: “Iran's Twitter Revolution.” Time Magazine puts Twitter on the cover with the Iranian flag. Andrew Sullivan—a famous blogger at the time—obsessively tweets using #iranelection and is called “the voice of the Iranian people.” Western media cite tweets as if they were dispatches from a war zone. The story was beautiful: young Iranians, tech-savvy and hungry for democracy, were using Twitter to organize protests, coordinate demonstrations, evade regime censorship. Facebook to plan, Twitter to coordinate, YouTube to document. It was the digital revolution overthrowing a dictatorship. Technology defeating repression. The good guys defeating the bad guys. The US State Department was so convinced of Twitter's importance that Jared Cohen—an official—sent an official email to Twitter asking them to “delay scheduled maintenance” so as not to interrupt the Iranian protests. Twitter agreed.

Then came Golnaz Esfandiari, an Iranian journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Where did the tweets actually come from? In June 2010, a year after the protests, Esfandiari published an article in Foreign Policy titled “The Twitter Devolution.” She wrote:

“Western journalists who couldn't reach—or didn't bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets posted with tag #iranelection. Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.”

Question: Why would Iranians organizing protests in Iran write in English? Esfandiari had identified the main Twitter hubs commenting on the Tehran protests and discovered something embarrassing: one was in the United States, one in Turkey, one in Switzerland. The latter's profile stated they “specialized in urging people to take to the streets.” She interviewed Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of Balatarin (one of the most popular Farsi-language websites) who said:

“Twitter's impact inside Iran is nil [...] Here [in the United States], there is lots of buzz. But once you look, you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves.”

Iranians—the real ones, in the streets—used SMS, phone calls, word of mouth. Traditional methods. Twitter was mainly useful for one thing: letting the world know what was happening. Documentation, not organization. But the numbers were even worse. In his 2011 book, Morozov cited data that made everything even clearer: only 19,235 Twitter accounts registered in Iran (0.027% of the population) on the eve of the 2009 elections. And many Green Movement sympathizers had changed their Twitter location to “Tehran” to confuse authorities, making it nearly impossible to distinguish whether people tweeting from Iran were in Tehran or, say, Los Angeles. An Al-Jazeera analysis cited by Morozov clarified that fact-checking during the protests had confirmed only 60 active Twitter accounts in Tehran. Sixty. And when Iranian authorities tightened their grip on online communications, that number dropped to six.

Vahid Online, a prominent Iranian blogger who was in Tehran during the protests, dismantled the Twitter Revolution thesis even more directly:

“Twitter never became very popular in Iran. [But] because the world was watching Iran with such [great interest] during those days, it led many to believe falsely that Iranian people were also getting their news through Twitter.”

Morozov put it with a perfect metaphor:

“If a tree falls in the forest and everyone tweets about it, it may not be the tweets that moved it.”

At this point in the story one could say “okay, the protests happened in Iran and the West encouraged and celebrated them. What's wrong with that?” Nothing, except that the ayatollah regime learned the lesson. This was the part of Morozov's thesis that had really shaken me. In plain terms, while the West was self-celebrating the “Twitter Revolution,” the Iranian government was taking notes. They understood that social media could be more useful to them than to activists. They could track who posted, they could identify protest leaders, they could infiltrate groups, they could use data to arrest, torture, kill. The 2009 protests were brutally suppressed. The Green Movement failed. And the regime emerged stronger, more experienced, more prepared to use technology as a weapon of control. But we were the good guys helping, right? Esfandiari and Morozov tried to tell us we were doing everything wrong, that we were projecting our fantasies and underestimating authoritarian regimes. Did we listen? Evidently not.

Iran 2026: same film, different cast

December 28, 2025. Protests begin in Iran. Economic crisis, the rial—Iran's currency—collapsed to 1.4 million per dollar, 40% inflation, UN sanctions reimposed in September, the entire Iranian “Axis of Resistance” in tatters after the 12-day war with Israel in June. The streets fill. First Tehran, then the whole country. 31 provinces. Millions of people. And of course, social media explodes. Twitter/X fills with videos, slogans, messages of solidarity. Western media cite tweets as primary sources. Reza Pahlavi—the exiled heir of the Shah deposed in 1979—calls for protests from his social accounts. Persian TV channels in exile (Manoto, Iran International) broadcast 24/7. The US State Department operates a Persian-language Twitter account (@USABehFarsi) constantly posting messages of support. Repetita (non) iuvant. It's 2009 again. Same narrative, same enthusiasm, same conviction that this time—this time for real—Twitter and social media will overthrow the regime. Then, on January 8, 2026, on the twelfth day of protests, the Iranian regime does something interesting. It shuts off the internet. Completely.

And I, being a good nerd who doesn't sleep, lives at night, and does things better left unsaid—sorry, the statute of limitations hasn't expired yet—asked myself: wait. If the internet is off in Iran, where is all this content coming from? Who is telling this story? And above all: are we making the same mistake as 2009 again? So, browsing here and there, I came across a long article by Shahram Akbarzadeh—professor of “Middle East & Central Asian Politics” at Deakin University—titled “The web of Big Lies: state-sponsored disinformation in Iran.” And I started reading.

Before moving forward: stop

Let's make one thing clear right away, because I already know someone will misunderstand: I stand in solidarity with those protesting in Iran. Completely. A theocratic regime that kills protesters—estimates range from 44 to 20,000 dead, impossible to know for certain precisely because of the blackout—deserves nothing but condemnation. The reasons for the protests are real, legitimate, understandable. Devastating economic crisis, systematic repression, 47 years of religious dictatorship. Those who take to the streets risk their lives. And they do.

But solidarity doesn't mean suspending critical thinking. It doesn't mean uncritically accepting every narrative being sold to us. It doesn't mean ignoring who is constructing this narrative, how and why. On the contrary. If we truly care about the Iranians who are protesting, we have a duty to understand what's really happening. Because wrong narratives have real consequences. And the consequences are always paid by them, not by us tweeting from the couch. So: solidarity yes, but also questions, if no one minds.

Technical Box: the evolution of digital censorship

TL;DR: Iran didn't simply “pull the plug.” It implemented the most sophisticated layered censorship system ever seen, which leaves infrastructure apparently normal while completely isolating the population. It's precision censorship, not sledgehammer censorship.

8:30 PM IRST (5:00 PM UTC). NetBlocks, the organization that monitors global connectivity, registers a sudden collapse: Iran goes from 100% to ~3% connectivity in a few hours. Not just mobile, also landlines, also phones. Calling into Iran from abroad? Impossible. Journalists trying from Dubai can't connect. Families abroad can't reach relatives in Tehran. Total blackout. But there's something curious. BGP routes—the paths that make the internet work—remain visible. Iranian servers continue responding to pings. From outside, the infrastructure looks normal. Cloudflare, IODA (Georgia Tech), all traditional monitoring systems see Iran still “online.” Yet user traffic has dropped 97%. How is this possible? To understand what happened on January 8, we need a step back. Iran has developed three generations of shutdowns, each more sophisticated than the last:

2019—Brute Force: During the November 2019 protests (which caused ~1,500 deaths), the regime simply removed BGP routes. It's like ripping out cables: crude, visible, it took 24+ hours to implement because every ISP had to do it manually. Economically devastating—banks stopped, the economy collapsed for six days.

2022—”Digital Curfew”: During the Mahsa Amini protests, selective targeting. They shut down cell towers in specific areas, slowed internet during protest hours (4:00-10:00 PM), blocked specific apps (WhatsApp, Instagram). More refined, less expensive.

2025-2026—”Stealth Blackout”: The final form. And here it becomes technically fascinating.

The current system operates at a single national chokepoint—all Iranian ISPs converge at a few state-controlled exit points. There, a layered system filters everything:

Layer 1—DNS Poisoning: Any DNS query for foreign domains gets redirected to 10.10.34.34—a private IP serving a generic block page. You search for google.com? You get an Iranian server saying “domain not found.”

Layer 2—Protocol Whitelisting: Only three protocols pass: DNS (port 53), HTTP (port 80), HTTPS (port 443). Everything else gets silently dropped. SSH? No. OpenVPN? No. WireGuard? No. Any traditional VPN? No. Zero response, zero error, simply... nothing.

Layer 3—Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): The showpiece. System purchased in 2008 from Nokia Siemens Networks, continuously updated. The DPI inspects ALL HTTPS traffic: – Reads the SNI (Server Name Indication) field in the TLS handshake – Inspects the commonName field in certificates – Analyzes HTTP headers (case-sensitive!) – Injects TCP RST or HTTP 403 block pages on the fly – Selective throttling of encrypted traffic. Practical example: you try to visit Twitter via HTTPS. Your browser starts the TLS handshake. The DPI reads “twitter.com” in the SNI field—which travels in cleartext—and injects a TCP RST. Connection terminated. Twitter's server doesn't even know you tried to connect.

Layer 4—National Information Network (NIN): The national Iranian intranet. Domestic services (banking, some state news sites) work perfectly. It's the internet... but only Iranian.

The result: – From the perspective of BGP routers: everything normal – From the perspective of servers: ping responds, infrastructure up – From the perspective of users: the internet no longer exists

It's genius, in the technical sense of the term.

During the June 2025 blackout (during the war with Israel), some tools worked: – Psiphon: 1.5 million users maintained (one third of normal base) thanks to multi-protocol design – Ceno Browser: decentralized peer-to-peer, from 600 to 8,000 active peers – Tor bridges: shot up – Starlink: worked... for those who could afford it (hotels, offices, a few privileged people)

But in the current January 2026 blackout? Even Starlink has started suffering interference. The regime has learned. And the cost? The impact? – Hospitals: booking systems offline – Banks: digital transactions blocked – Pharmacies: impossible to verify electronic prescriptions – Shops: many didn't open (POS not working)

The real purpose isn't to stop the economy. It's to stop documentation. It's to obscure the massacres.

And Signal?

There's an interesting detail completely missing from the 2026 protests narrative, and the silence says a lot. Signal—the encrypted messaging app considered the gold standard for activists and dissidents—is barely mentioned. No articles, no appeals, no campaigns to bypass censorship. Yet Signal had been the weapon of choice during the 2017-2018 protests.

“Signal has always been advertised as the go-to application for dissidents or activists to stay secure from any state authority,”

said Mahsa Alimardani, researcher for Article19, in 2021.

But what happened? January 2021, after a massive migration from WhatsApp to Signal, the Iranian government labeled it as “criminal content” and blocked it completely. September 2022, during the Mahsa Amini protests, Signal was still blocked and had to launch a global campaign (#IRanASignalProxy) to create proxy servers to bypass censorship. January 2026? Total silence. Signal had been neutralized four years earlier. The technically superior option to all others—end-to-end encryption by default, zero metadata collection, run by a nonprofit—had already been removed from the playing field. The regime had done its homework. They had identified the most dangerous tool for them and crushed it while it was still small, years before it became mainstream.

And when the total blackout arrived on January 8, the debate about “Signal yes/no” was already obsolete.

But If the Internet Is off, how do they communicate?

This is the key question. On January 8, the internet dies in Iran. But videos keep arriving. Tweets continue. News continues. How?

First answer: Starlink Some Iranians—very few—have access to Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite service. Mainly hotels, offices, homes of wealthy people. These become the few “eyes” that can still communicate with the outside. But we're talking about an infinitesimal percentage of the population. And even Starlink is suffering increasing interference.

Second answer: before the blackout Many videos we see now were uploaded before January 8. They get re-shared, re-posted, presented as “real-time” but actually they're from days ago. Difficult to distinguish without precise geolocation and verifiable timestamps.

Third answer (the uncomfortable one): from outside Most of the narrative doesn't come from Iran. It comes from Persian TV channels in exile, from the Iranian diaspora, from social accounts of opponents abroad.

And here things get complicated.

Where does the narrative really start?

Euronews, January 10, 2026:

“Rumours have been particularly widespread throughout the two weeks of mass protests across Iran. Many of those rumours originate from anonymous users on social media platforms, and are being covered by media outlets, purely for headline purposes.”

The Conversation (academic analysis):

“Instagram and Twitter are filled with such reaction, making this form of engagement unusually widespread and visible... Iranian dissident news channels outside the country have become key but controversial sources of rolling information, shaping their own narratives from limited available reports.”

Miaan Group (Middle East research organization):

“Available evidence suggests that Pahlavi support is uneven, largely media- and social-media-driven, and not underpinned by organized infrastructure on the ground. Overstating exile-led narratives risks misreading the protest's domestic drivers and reinforcing Tehran's justification for repression.”

That is: by amplifying the narrative constructed from abroad, we're literally giving the regime justification to massacre protesters. And this isn't speculation. Jerusalem Post cites an Iranian expert:

“The monarchist Persian language media stations, especially Manoto TV, are manipulating images of protests in Iran to portray Reza Pahlavi as the only man whose name is heard in the streets, but this is a completely false and duplicitous depiction.”

We're talking about active manipulation. Not generous interpretation—manipulation. Real videos of protests, audio removed, false voice-overs added to make it seem like people are asking for the Shah's return. Black and white become increasingly similar to gray, don't they?

Who commands this revolution?

Reza Pahlavi. The exiled heir. 65 years old, has lived in the United States since he was 16 (when his father was overthrown in 1979). He explicitly called for protests from January 8, using his social channels. But how much support does he really have in Iran?

From CNN, with rare honesty:

“Analysts say that it is unclear what might be driving the renewed excitement for the royal family in Iran. Arash Azizi, an academic and author of the book 'What Iranians Want,' told CNN that, while Pahlavi 'has turned himself into a frontrunner in Iranian opposition politics,' he is also 'a divisive figure and not a unifying one.'”

And here lies the paradox. Iranians take to the streets for the collapsed economy, for personal freedoms, for the end of religious dictatorship, for civil rights. Not necessarily for the return of the monarchy. The Shah—Pahlavi's father—was himself a dictator, supported by the CIA, responsible for brutal repression. The 1979 revolution overthrew him precisely for this. But the narrative reaching the West? “They want Pahlavi.” Why? Because the exile TV channels say so. Because the Iranian diaspora—living in Los Angeles, London, Paris—supports him. Because videos are manipulated to make it seem like people are asking for him. And the regime? The regime uses exactly this narrative to justify the massacres. “See? It's a monarchist insurrection supported from abroad. They're foreign agents. Terrorists. The repression is justified.”

And we, therefore, what should we do? Stay silent?

Source analysis—aka “Who are we really citing”

Let's look at where the “news” about Iran comes from:

Iran International: Persian TV based in London. Funding: controversial, documented Saudi ties. Repeatedly accused of manipulating footage.

Manoto TV: Another Persian TV in exile. Declared pro-monarchist. Accused of false voice-overs.

HRANA (Human Rights Activists News Agency): Based in the United States. Founded by anti-regime activists. Provides the death toll numbers. Primary source for many Western media.

Reza Pahlavi: The heir himself. Worth commenting?

US State Department: Twitter account @USABehFarsi posting in Persian. Constant message: “we support you, overthrow the regime.”

Notice something? All major sources are based outside Iran, have a clear political agenda (anti-regime, often pro-Pahlavi), and in some cases there's documented content manipulation. And sources from Iran are nearly nonexistent, practically zero, because the internet is off. So the narrative is being constructed entirely from outside, in an information vacuum, by actors with specific interests. It's 2009 again. But in 2009, at least, they were naive Westerners tweeting about Iran thinking they were helping. In 2026 we have active video manipulation, exile TV channels constructing false narratives, the US State Department directly feeding Persian social media, Western media citing compromised sources as primary. All this while Iran is completely offline.

And meanwhile, the real people protesting for real reasons—economy, freedom, dignity—die every day. 2,000 dead. Maybe 6,000. Maybe 20,000. We'll never know for certain, precisely thanks to the blackout.

Am I naive? Perhaps

I return to that unpleasant feeling from ten years ago, when I closed “The Net Delusion.” Morozov doesn't let you win. He doesn't let you choose the good guys' side. He shows you that technology amplifies existing power dynamics. That authoritarian regimes learn. That Western slacktivism has real consequences.

And that the worst thing we can do is project our technological fantasies—the “Twitter Revolution”—onto real protest movements, with real people risking real lives. When we get the narrative wrong, when we amplify the wrong voices, when we manipulate content to conform to our preferred story... the consequences aren't paid by us. They're paid by them. The Iranians who protest don't need us to tweet #IranProtests from the couch. They don't need exile TV channels manipulating their videos. They don't need the US State Department publicly “supporting” them (giving the regime the “foreign interference” narrative).

They need us to understand what's really happening, to distinguish between real protests and constructed narratives, to be careful about who we amplify and why. They need us to stop believing that the internet solves political problems with a simple “click and share.” Because, as Morozov warned us, it often complicates them.

The internet is serious business, and should be treated seriously.

The blackout becomes permanent

In mid-January 2026, news emerged that could make everything even more disturbing. Iran International reported that the Iranian regime is finalizing a project to permanently disconnect the country from the global internet. And it's not just a theoretical project. It's almost operational.

The architecture of the great Iranian firewall

The details are chilling in their concreteness. The data center is bunkerized under the Fanap building in Pardis IT Town (20km from Tehran), designed to withstand missile attacks. It has a capacity of 400 server racks with Huawei hardware. Estimated cost is between $700 million and $1 billion. Logistics saw 24 containers enter Iran after the June 2025 war. Management is assigned to ArvanCloud (Iranian cloud) through a shell company called Ayandeh Afzay-e Karaneh. And the connections are clear: Fanap and its CEO Shahab Javanmardi are under US sanctions for ties to intelligence and IRGC.

How it would work technically

The system is based on the National Information Network (NIN)—a project started in 2005, gradually implemented from 2013 and fully operational since 2019. It's the Iranian intranet, in essence. It works like this: when you connect in Iran, your traffic passes through a centralized control point—the Telecommunication Infrastructure Company (TIC), state monopoly. There, the system decides. Request for a .ir site or NIN service? Goes on the domestic Iranian network. Request for a foreign site? Goes to the gateway toward the global internet (if active).

The “kill switch” simply disables the foreign gateway. And suddenly Iranian banks work (on NIN), local e-commerce works (on NIN), government services work (on NIN), Iranian emails work (on NIN), while Google, Twitter, Facebook, all the foreign internet is at zero. The difference from 2019 is substantial. Before, shutting off the internet meant paralyzing the economy—no banks, no payments, nothing. It cost billions per day. It wasn't sustainable long-term. Now instead? They can shut off the global internet while leaving everything else working. It's economically sustainable. They can maintain it for months.

A technological paradox

Here's something that struck me: technically it's sophisticated—very sophisticated. But strategically... there's a contradiction that almost doesn't make sense. Let's look at how modern surveillance works in Russia and the United States, not to defend it, obviously, but to understand the difference in approach.

The Russian model (SORM): The internet stays open and functioning. Users can access Google, Facebook, Twitter. But every ISP has installed an FSB “black box” that records everything. Every email, every click, every message. Storage is mandatory: 6 months of full content, 3 years of metadata according to the 2016 Yarovaya law. The FSB can retrieve data in real-time directly, without the ISP knowing what they're looking for. In 2023: 500,000 surveillance requests approved, only 272 denied. The result? Opponents use the internet normally, thinking they're free. They organize, communicate, build networks. And meanwhile the system records everything. When needed—20,000+ arrests for online speech between 2022 and 2024—they already have all the evidence, all the contacts, the entire map of social relationships.

The American model (PRISM): Same logic, different implementation. Since Snowden we know that NSA accesses Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple servers directly. They collect everyone's metadata. “We kill people based on metadata,” said former CIA director Michael Hayden. Appearance of democracy and free internet. Reality of invisible but total mass surveillance.

The Iranian approach (NIN): Shut off the internet when needed.

By shutting off the internet, Iran loses all the intelligence capability these systems provide. They can no longer track who talks to whom. They can't infiltrate groups. They can't monitor opponents' communications. They can't build maps of social networks. They literally remove the most powerful surveillance tool that exists from themselves. In exchange they get the ability to hide massacres for a few weeks. But at the cost of complete loss of intelligence during the blackout, blatant evidence of authoritarianism, economic damage even with NIN functioning, international isolation, and demonstration of their own fragility.

Russia and the USA have understood something that Iran seems not to have grasped: invisible control is infinitely more effective than visible control. You let people think they're free, let them use the internet, let them communicate. And meanwhile you record everything, analyze everything. When needed, you strike with surgical precision having all the necessary evidence. Iran has built a visible digital cage. One that declares to the world “we're an authoritarian regime terrified of our population.” One that eliminates its own surveillance capability precisely when it would need it most. It's the difference between long-term thinking (building permanent intelligence systems) and short-term thinking (hiding today's massacres). SORM and PRISM are invisible dystopias, and they work precisely because people don't see them. NIN is visible dystopia. And visible dystopias tend to generate revolutions, and fail soon.

IranWire reports that the plan is to maintain the blackout at least until the Iranian New Year, March 20, 2026.

It is, in essence, an act of desperation. The general population (level 1) will have only NIN, zero external access. “Authorized” professionals (level 2) will have NIN plus filtered internet. Government, IRGC and elite (level 3) will have full access. Every connection is tracked via national ID and phone number. Every access is attributable. And when they reactivate the internet—even partially—they'll know exactly who used Starlink, who used a VPN, who shared videos.

The model, needless to say, is China. The Chinese Great Firewall blocks foreign services but replaces them—Baidu instead of Google, Weibo instead of Twitter. China offers you an alternative, even if controlled. Iran? Iran can simply shut everything off and force you onto the national network. And with Huawei providing hardware and expertise (the same ones who built the Chinese system), and Russia providing advanced DPI technology (Protei), they have all the puzzle pieces.

And we're back to square one, as usual.

Tor: the infinite technological war

While Starlink makes headlines as the only tool of freedom, there's a tool that for nearly 20 years has been playing hide and seek with authoritarian regimes. Tor—The Onion Router—is historically the tool of choice for those living under censorship. During the Chinese Great Firewall. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Egypt during the Arab Spring. In Syria. And in Iran, repeatedly.

Every time Iran has experienced moments of crisis, Tor has seen massive usage spikes:

2009—Green Movement: Tor relays shot up to 1.5 million Iranian users. The regime blocked direct connections. Users discovered Tor Bridges (non-public relays, harder to block). The regime learned.

2019—November, gasoline protests: Complete blackout for 6 days. Tor usage dropped to zero along with all internet. But when they turned it back on, the number of Tor users was higher than before. People had learned.

2022—Mahsa Amini, Woman Life Freedom: Nightly digital curfews (only mobile networks off 4:00-10:00 PM). Tor Bridges exploded. The regime implemented DPI to recognize Tor traffic and block it selectively.

And here's the interesting point. It's not a simple block. It's a continuous technological war.

In 2012, a Tor developer wrote on the official blog a phrase that should make us reflect:

“The Iranian government has, in less than a year and starting from scratch, caught up and now surpassed the Tor project in technical ability.”

What does this mean practically? That the Iranian regime has developed DPI systems capable of recognizing Tor traffic even if encrypted. Wait, how is that possible? Tor uses SSL/TLS exactly as if it were cleartext. All traffic is encrypted. How do they distinguish it? By watching behavior, not content. It's like recognizing someone by the way they walk even if they're wearing a disguise. Iranian DPI analyzes:

They're not reading inside encrypted packets. They're watching from outside and recognizing the fingerprint. In real-time. On all national traffic. It's technically impressive.

But the Tor project responded

The strategy has evolved over time, essentially completely disguising Tor traffic to make it look like something else.

And it works. Sometimes. Until the regime updates again. Snowflake gets identified? Tor develops a new pluggable transport. The regime recognizes it? The next one is developed. For every step forward by censors, Tor actively responds.

And now? January 2026? Here's a problem. Tor usage data always has a publication delay to protect users. But historically, the pattern is always the same: crisis and protests begin, censorship increases, Tor usage shoots up, the regime develops countermeasures, and finally total blackout if necessary. Given that we're in total blackout, Tor usage has crashed to zero—like in 2019. You can't use Tor if you don't have internet, not even censored internet. But when they turn it back on—and they will, even just partially—I expect to see a massive spike. Because Iranians have learned. Starlink costs too much. Normal VPNs get blocked. Tor, with the right bridges, still works.

But there's another paradox. Tor protects anonymity during connection. But the simple fact of trying to connect to Tor is identifiable by DPI. And traceable to your national ID. So the regime can see: who tried to use Tor (even if blocked), when they tried and for how long. And when the blackout ends, they might have a complete list of “technologically sophisticated dissidents” to arrest. It's the same logic as Starlink—retroactive use as evidence of dissent. The fight for free internet in Iran has been going on for nearly 20 years. It's not a new story. But even Tor can be defeated by a total blackout. And with the NIN/Huawei system becoming permanent, even when they turn the internet back on it might be an internet so controlled, so filtered, so tracked, that not even Tor will be enough.

Conclusions—and some questions

I started with Morozov, with that unpleasant feeling from ten years ago. With the discovery that the “Twitter Revolution” of 2009 was a Western projection, not an Iranian reality. And I've arrived here. Iran 2026. Same film, different cast. Same narratives constructed from abroad. Same amplification of exile voices. Same video manipulation. Same regime using all this as justification to massacre. But there's a crucial difference from 2009. In 2009, the regime had learned that the internet was useful to them (surveillance) but dangerous (documentation). In 2026, they've solved the equation radically: they've built a system to have internet when they need it (domestic NIN) and shut it off when they don't (kill switch toward the outside). 700 million—1 billion dollars. Huawei hardware. Russian DPI. Anti-missile bunker. 400 server racks. Operational by March 2026. It's no longer temporary and expensive censorship. It's permanent information control infrastructure. It's a digital cage.

Where does the content about Iranian protests come from while the internet has been off for 9+ days? Mainly from abroad. From exile TV channels with controversial funding. From diaspora living thousands of miles away. From sources with clear agendas and, in some cases, documented manipulation.

Who is driving the narrative? Pahlavi from the USA. Manoto TV altering audio. Iran International accused of false voice-overs. US State Department tweeting in Persian. Diaspora demonstrating with Shah flags.

Who is driving the real protests in Iran? Probably no one. Probably it's leaderless, organic, driven by economic desperation and 47 years of repression. The people in the streets shout “bread, work, freedom”—not necessarily “bring us back the Shah.”

But the narrative reaching us? That one talks about Pahlavi. About monarchy. About “Iranian Revolution 2.0.” Exactly the narrative the regime wants to justify the massacres. “See? Western plot. Foreign agents. Monarchist terrorists.”

And the gap between narrative and reality? It costs human lives. 2,000 dead? 6,000? 12,000? 20,000? We'll never know for certain, precisely thanks to the blackout that was supposed to be “temporary” and is becoming permanent.

Morozov was right

The internet, unfortunately, is not free by definition. Technology amplifies existing power dynamics. Authoritarian regimes learn, adapt, build increasingly sophisticated systems. The Iranian regime has spent 17 years—from 2009 to today—studying how to control the internet. They've invested billions. They've collaborated with China and Russia. They've developed DPI that recognizes Tor, systems that block VPNs, architectures that allow economically sustainable blackouts. And the technological “resistance”? It depends on Elon Musk donating Starlink—and he can decide to turn it off tomorrow. It depends on Tor Project playing whack-a-mole with Iranian countermeasures. It depends on individuals who risk arrest and torture to use circumvention technologies. It's not a fair fight. It never was.

Cyber-utopianism is a drug. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we're “helping.” That technology always wins. That the internet liberates. But reality is more complex, more uncomfortable. Technology is a tool. And like all tools, it can be used to liberate or to oppress. Authoritarian regimes have resources, expertise, and zero ethical constraints. The “resistance” has volunteers, limited budgets, and the weight of not wanting to cause harm. The Iranians who protest don't need us to celebrate Starlink as savior. They don't need us to amplify narratives constructed from abroad. They don't need our slacktivism. They need us to understand what's really happening. To distinguish between real protests and constructed narratives. To not give the regime the propaganda ammunition it needs. To stop believing that the internet solves political problems. They need us to finally learn the lesson Morozov was trying to teach us 15 years ago.

Discuss...

#Iran #IranProtests #NetDelusion #EvgenyMorozov #TwitterRevolution #Tor #Starlink #DigitalCensorship #InternetFreedom #Authoritarianism

Mastodon :: Pixelfed :: Email :: Element