Internet collapses in Iran amid protests against economic crisis

Internet connectivity collapsed across Iran on Thursday amid nationwide protests, according to web monitoring companies.

“I think we are now almost completely disconnected from the outside world,” Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher who works for the nonprofit group Miaan, told TechCrunch.

Doug Madory, director of internet analytics at Kentik, a company that monitors internet traffic around the world, agrees, telling TechCrunch that Iran’s internet has been in a “near total blackout” since Thursday around 11:30 a.m. on the US east coast, or 8 p.m. local time in Tehran.

Internet Traffic Monitor NetBlocksinternet infrastructure company Cloud Flareand Internet connectivity tracking site IODall simultaneously recorded sudden drops in connectivity across Iran.

“We continue to see a small amount of traffic, but the country is actually completely offline,” David Belson, head of data analytics at Cloudflare, told TechCrunch.

At the end of December, protests broke out in several cities in Iran, following a sharp drop in the value of the country’s currency, causing shortages of goods and spectacular price increases. Some shops in Tehran’s traditional bazaar have been closed for 11 days, according to the New York Times.

The Iranian government responded by violently repressing the demonstrators.

The Iranian government, which maintains tight control over internet access in the country, is behind the internet outage, according to Rashidi.

Iranian government officials in the United States did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The Iranian Foreign Ministry website was down at the time of publication.