Internet service in Iran cut or restricted as deadly protests reach possible tipping point

Iranian authorities appear to have cut off internet access in the capital and some other parts of the country on Thursday. demonstrations and chants against the government continue. Multiple sources in Tehran told CBS News that the internet was down in the capital.

THE Monitoring organization NetBlocks said around 8:30 a.m. local time in Iran, its live data “shows that Iran is now in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout; the incident follows a series of escalating digital censorship measures targeting protests across the country and hampering the public’s right to communicate at a critical time.”

A CBS News source in the capital said there were “huge crowds across Tehran. Unprecedented,” and confirmed that the internet was down for most of the city’s residents. He said some people with more robust and reliable business accounts could still log in.

Reports were spread on social media, largely by anti-regime activists, that web service was also unavailable or severely restricted in the cities of Isfahan, Lodegan, Abdanan and parts of Shiraz.

The internet outages came as Iranians began chanting out of their windows against the regime, following a call from exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the US-backed son of the former shah, to make their voices heard at 8 p.m. local time (noon Eastern). Analysts and insiders told CBS News that the scale of the response to Pahalvi’s call could determine whether the killing, 12-day-old protests run out of steam as previous waves of unrest have done, or become a major challenge to the government and provoke a possible wider crackdown.

“All the huge crowds in my neighborhood are pro-Pahlavi and in several areas my sources report the same thing: pro-Pahlavi crowds predominate, undeniably,” the source in Tehran told CBS News, calling it “monarchists responding to Reza.”

So far, the unrest has left at least 39 people dead, including at least four members of the security services, and led to the arrest of more than 2,260 others, according to the US news agency Human Rights Activists News Agency.

NetBlocks said earlier that its “data shows loss of connectivity on #Iran Internet network provider TCI in the restive city of Kermanshah as protests spread across the country in their 12th day; “The incident comes amid rising casualties and indications of disruption in several areas.”

Iranian authorities regularly restrict or disable Internet access when they anticipate large protests or other potentially destabilizing events.

President Mahsoud Pezeshkian, seen as a reformer but subordinate to Iran’s longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hinted before his election in 2024 that he would free up the internet and make more websites accessible. But this remains highly restricted. Social media sites such as TikTok, Facebook and X are officially banned, as is access to US and European news sites, including CBS News.

Many young, tech-savvy Iranians have become experts at circumventing restrictions, but it is a tedious process, and when the regime slows down Internet speeds at politically sensitive times, the entire system can become unusable.