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From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

163 points17 dayskentik.com
hkalbasi16 days ago

As an Iranian in Iran who is now connected, I have a request: Please tell google make colab available behind the safe browsing IP. Google's safe browsing IP is usually the #1 whitelisted IP in internet blackouts. Having colab on this IP allows tech people to ssh into their servers, and bootstrap connections based on the available protocols at the time.

RandyOrion16 days ago

There is a dedicated thread of record and anti-censorship resources of the Iran Network Shutdown [1]. Hope it helps.

[1] https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/561

direwolf2016 days ago

If this happened, they would blacklist it.

slumberlust16 days ago

In the absence of a perfect solution, we should do nothing? The entire scenario is a cat and mouse whack-a-mole arms race. I'd support doing something to give the citizens a leg up.

direwolf2016 days ago

You can run a Google Colab proxy on your website. Predictably, they will block your website because preventing access to wrongthink is more important than ensuring access to rightthink.

bjourne16 days ago

Doesn't using ssh from colab violate their ToS?

gsf_emergency_616 days ago

On the small chance that cloudflare is also whitelisted.., you might want to try a cloudflared tunnel..

Good luck! i hope you will soon be able to call your congressman

https://archive.ph/2026.01.22-082913/https://www.aljazeera.c...

navigate831016 days ago

> To mitigate the costs of its shutdown, the Iranian government has created an internal national internet and appears to be in the process of building a “whitelisting” system to allow certain individuals and services internet access while blocking the rest. If these measures successfully enable an unpopular Iranian government to remain in power, we can expect to see them replicated elsewhere.

Another emerging country to watch out for is India. Sliding democracy by suppressing any form for free speech in main stream media and overwhelming propaganda on social media that drowns genuine critics is very chilling.

leosanchez16 days ago

> Sliding democracy by suppressing any form for free speech in main stream media and overwhelming propaganda on social media that drowns genuine critics is very chilling.

Hearing about this and calls about imminent genocide from the last 10 years. India never had free speech. There is plenty of propaganda on the other side too. YouTube is full of anti-govt. propagandists.

Braxton198016 days ago

If you want things to change we need to start going after the source of the governments power, the people that vote for them. T

g-unit3316 days ago

Even if 90% of the country marks the box against the regime, they’ll still announce a 90% 'landslide' victory. Voting doesn't matter, when you print your own outcome

Braxton198015 days ago

What percentage of the Iranian population supports the government? 10%? I doubt that

aaa_aaa16 days ago

[flagged]

g-unit3316 days ago

I was born and raised in Iran with my entire family being there fighting the fight. I'd like to think I'd debated both sides enough to be able to make the argument for both sides. However, the inhumanity and corruption of the Iranian regime will be looked back upon in history with some of the most corrupt/inhumane governments of all time

+1
sshine16 days ago
UltraSane16 days ago

That isn't even remotely true.

doodlebugging16 days ago

It would be easier if the people who built the tools that will be used for oppression simply disable those tools or turn them on the oppressors.

navigate831016 days ago

Trickling dose of brainrot propaganda and general level of incompetence of the people has made everyone numb. Youths for all care finding love and reels, boomers are content with whatever situation they are in as they consider it an ideal. Almost everyone is not made aware of anything that brings about 2 sides of any story. Empowering and thought provoking debates are frowned upon. The government will try to self-destructive itself, in order to disapprove critics. It is this mentality and situation the present government and bureaucracy amplifies and exploits to the maximum extent. I'm not critical of the present machinery but any successive legislature and judiciary will do the same.

bakugo16 days ago

Agreed. If we want democracy to prosper, we clearly need to start punishing people who vote incorrectly.

Braxton198014 days ago

So you disagree but you didn't offer up a counter argument or ask me any questions.

Why do you think I'm wrong?

doublesocket16 days ago

I don't think OP was implying punishing voters.

+1
pphysch16 days ago
pydry16 days ago

[flagged]

thisislife216 days ago

As someone not from the west, I can relate to your viewpoints. While Iran and Venezuela, for example, may be flawed democracies, the west forgets that those who came to power there did so after a popular uprising and revolution. And just because the west doesn't like the current leaders there (for asserting their sovereignty on economic affairs), I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many westerners here who think just because Iranians are disgruntled at their current rulers, they are waiting to welcome the son of a despot ruler who they overthrew once, who has lived most of his life abroad, and urges foreign countries to invade his country so he can be the ruler of Iran again! The same with Venezuela too - however pissed of the Venezuelans are the current government, no Venezuelan is going to welcome the current Nobel peace prize winner, a right-wing politician who plans to privatize the energy resources of her country so her family can get back the "rights" that she believes was "stolen" from her, especially when she too urges foreign countries to invade her country.

I do subscribe to the view that politicians like these, who seek the help of foreign powers to come to power, are definitely traitors to their country. Inviting foreign powers to meddle in your affairs is how civil war erupt and lead to the eventual breakup of a country.

NickC2516 days ago

>...I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many westerners here...

It's not a lack of understanding, my friend, it's hubris.

I am from the US. There's a mindset that permeates through the west that somehow we are "better", because of our values, or our governmental systems, or our economic power, or our military power, or whatever. It is flawed.

We also have a rather naive and simplistic viewpoint that because we are "better", that our viewpoint is the correct one, and that people from non-western nations should just accept whatever we do because it's in their best interest. Oftentimes, though, that "best interest" is in the short-term capitalistic/economic interest of the actors from the West who in turn stand to profit handsomely from the setup they wish to impose on nations like Iran or Venezuela. There is no concern for human life, no concern for the economic or societal health longterm of the impacted countries, nor for the country's internal affairs.

This has cost us dearly over the years. Sadly, the irony here is that a lot of these countries have a very "westernized" populace who just want to control their own resources. If we weren't such assholes to them, they'd be on "our side" as opposed to the overractionary path they have taken.

+1
bitsage15 days ago
hersko16 days ago

[flagged]

pphysch16 days ago

Israel was car bombing Iran less than a year ago, with the open intention of destroying the state through terrorism. Yet violent agitation is a bridge too far?

+1
IOT_Apprentice16 days ago
isr16 days ago

[flagged]

ipv6ipv416 days ago

There has been much prognostication about the internet blackout but it misses the real issue. The internet blackout only works perfectly when there are no media backed journalists on the ground. The absolute absence of any reporting from foreign journalists on the ground anywhere in Iran is striking.

There was even some reporting from Tiananmen Square in 1989, and from Baghdad in 1991.

News media has ceased to be a meaningful investigative endeavor.

jltsiren16 days ago

There are plenty of Western journalists in Iran, but they are subject to the same internet blackout as everyone else. Embassies can use satellite communications due to diplomatic immunity, while journalists are just average nobodies who face extra scrutiny due to their jobs.

cmclaughlin16 days ago

I would be surprised if there many western journalists left in Iran…

Here is an excellent podcast from a Washington post journalist that was captured and held as a hostage - it’s called 544 days (that’s the amount of time he was jailed there)

https://crooked.com/podcast-series/544-days/

jraby316 days ago

Why can't they use starlink?

jltsiren16 days ago

Starlink is illegal in Iran. Being a foreign journalist is a huge red flag in totalitarian countries, making it harder to smuggle in illegal devices than for the average citizen or visitor. And because journalists are probably under surveillance by the regime, it's harder for them to obtain Starlink terminals in the country than for the average person.

+1
IOT_Apprentice16 days ago
ethersteeds16 days ago

TFA mentions one reason: the "recent Iranian law that would equate the use of Starlink with espionage, punishable by death"

pjc5016 days ago

Are there? It seems like an extremely dangerous place to do journalism.

andruby16 days ago

It's depressing really. Unfortunately the business model for media companies isn't what it used to be.

These days, I think the business model is selling influence rather than selling subscriptions and generic ads.

dominicrose16 days ago

Immediately when the blackout started an Iranian living abroad told me there will be a massacre. No journalists needed to know that but journalists do bring credibility to a claim. The tiny part of the population that is whitelisted is spreading lies, which doesn't help.

toadet16 days ago

[dead]

baxtr16 days ago

> Had authorities withdrawn IPv4 routes, as they did with IPv6, Iran would have become completely unreachable, as Egypt was in January 2011. By keeping IPv4 routes in circulation, Iranian authorities can selectively grant full internet access to specific users while denying it to the broader population.

As of late, we’ve seen a few measures like the restoration of transit from Rostelecom and the return of routes originated by IPM, as the country appears to be moving towards a partial restoration. At the time of this writing, the plan appears to be to operate the Iranian internet as a whitelisted network indefinitely.

I’d call that digital apartheid.

breppp16 days ago

Not going to defend the islamic republic with its massacres, but if there is no racial element there is no apartheid, no need to overload a precise term.

This is simply turning down methods of communications to reduce protestors ability to coordinate and enable mass killings

dominicrose16 days ago

Apartheid isn't only about race. It can be about genre. It obviously exists in Iran. There's also a long history of Persians vs Arabs, an weaponised islam.

IOT_Apprentice16 days ago

Do you mean Sunni vs Shia? I don’t think that is a reasonable statement by you. Will you also apply that term to Ireland?

dominicrose16 days ago

I don't apply the term to everything I mentioned Arabs because they are the occupying force in Iran. They even brought Iraqis to repress the population. That is today but there's also a long history in Iran/Persian. Ireland also has a complex history but I don't know enough about that.

baxtr16 days ago

I understand what you are saying and I was thinking about it when I wrote my comment.

I still stand by the term. Apartheid literally means "apartness". Even though the segregation in this case is not on a racial basis they still classify their population into two major blocks. Some have full rights, others have none.

UltraSane16 days ago

Iran treats Jews as second class citizens and prevents them from all leaving.

IOT_Apprentice16 days ago

I’m sure you have proof of this. Prevents them how? Iranians have been traveling in and out of their country for decades.

Braxton198016 days ago

Couldn't they just not kill people in mass?

direwolf2016 days ago

For some reason this is never seen as a viable solution

adzm16 days ago

Hopefully this is something we can agree upon

trhway16 days ago

The Rostelecom mentioning isn't just an accident - in Russia they have been practicing whitelisting more and more by turning the Internet off, except for whitelisted sites, under the guise of safety measures during drone attacks (which is like almost every day/night), various high level visits, mass public events, etc.

gsf_emergency_616 days ago
lucasRW16 days ago

"under the guise of safety measures "

>> Like in Europe then. :o)

"It's to protect the children"

alephnerd16 days ago

That's pretty much their plan - to create an Internet-e-Paak or "Pure" Internet. This all started back during the Green Revolution.

gsf_emergency_616 days ago

Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :)

Picture of Tehran (hybrid warfare)

https://archive.ph/2026.01.21-041206/https://www.aljazeera.c...

GaggiX16 days ago

A friend of mine (from Iran) managed to send me a few messages on January 18th via Telegram (Telegram is very popular in Iran) when the situation was though to be resolving and then nothing, blackout again.

And even when the blackout was not present, my friend had to used some complex V2Ray server (in Iran) to another server (in Germany) to connect and it was shared by other people, so if he cannot connect probably 99% of other people in his area cannot also connect outside.

alephnerd16 days ago

Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0].

Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [9], and China [9]

My understanding is that during the current 5 year plan in Iran, they are trying to fully transition the Iranian internet to the NIN, as all ".ir" domains are supposed to be hosted on the NIN.

If someone wants to find a techno-authoritarian state I'd say Iran is probably closer to that vision than most other countries, as a large portion of their leadership are Western-educated (Stanford, MIT, UPMC/Paris VI, Supélec, UNSW, etc) Computer Engineers and Computer Scientists by training (eg. Iran's VP did his PhD under Thomas Cover at Stanford [8] and Rouhani's Chief of Staff studied EE@SJSU). Even Iran's NSC and former IRGC head (who's daughter is a surgeon at Emory - so much for marg bar amreeka) was a CS major turned Kantian philosophy PhD.

[0] - https://citizenlab.ca/irans-national-information-network/

[1] - https://www.arvancloud.ir/fa

[2] - https://tvbrics.com/en/news/uganda-and-iran-to-boost-ict-co-...

[3] - https://mail.techreviewafrica.com/public/news/1361/kenya-and...

[4] - https://www.samenacouncil.org/samena_daily_news?news=64545

[5] - https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/08/06/752585/Iranian-fibe...

[6] - https://zmc.co.ir/

[7] - https://www.rayafiber.com/en/home

[8] - https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1011657

[9] - https://www.kharon.com/brief/iran-sanctions-maximum-pressure...

jimbohn16 days ago

Kinda envious of them that, due to sanctions, they end up with hyperscalers. Europe will never get hyperscales while being too tight with the US, and any protectionism at the service industry level would make the US go more mental than it already is.

alephnerd16 days ago

It's not only because of sanctions. It's primarily because their leadership have deeply technical backgrounds. Most of my peers who ended up in policymaking roles in Europe (and in some cases the levers of power) all had a humanities or legal background and never worked in or adjacent to the tech industry.

Assuming Iran didn't follow the path that it did, Iran would have also ended up becoming a tech hub like Israel became today.

But this recognition should not be used to glaze a regime that has officially admitted to killing at least 5,000 protestors [0] in just 2 weeks and in reality killed significantly more people than that.

Being adept at understanding the applications of technology doesn't make one a humanist.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/iranian-offic...

hshdhdhj444416 days ago

Iranians have a 5+ millennia culture of being highly educated, technical and creative.

That expertise wasn’t just gonna disappear in a couple of decades.

And yes, the Iranian regime is brutal and terrible. This was one time the opposition was strong enough that they may have had a chance and yet our fellow in chief decided to launch incendiary words, which only allowed the regime to paint the opposition as western funded, while not providing any actual support (there’s a reason Israel, which is at least led by competent leadership, kept quiet about the protests in Iran because they understand how their words of support would undermine them).

myth_drannon16 days ago

Iran is rich in natural resources(gas,oil), one of the richest actually. No country so rich can become a tech hub like Israel/Singapore (which just had no other options for development).

jimbohn16 days ago

Agree with you on pretty much everything you have said. The background of policymakers in Europe really annoys me. Just to be clear, I wasn't glazing Iran or anything.

+2
larodi16 days ago
gsf_emergency_616 days ago

A subtle reason for preferring negotiations towards mutually beneficial ends-- sanctions can supercharge tech adoption

jimbohn16 days ago

Yeah, or even just protectionism. Most economists I've heard say that protectionism doesn't work, but I feel like China being quiet and protectionist in the infancy of its key industries was like the move of the century for them.

gsf_emergency_616 days ago

Protectionism and sanctions form a kind of virtuous feedback loop :)

https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

>The Iranian Information Technology Organization (ITOI) even set precise rules to evaluate candidates based on three different standards: ISO 27017 (cloud security controls), ISO 27018 (protection of personally identifiable information), and NIST SP 900-145, which concerns the American definition of cloud computing. “They want a comprehensive offer with its three components— IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

+3
energy12316 days ago
+4
baxtr16 days ago
culi16 days ago

That first link you shared is fascinating. This group also published this incredible report on an AI-enabled influence operation aimed at toppling Iran

https://citizenlab.ca/research/2025-10-ai-enabled-io-aimed-a...

ifwinterco16 days ago

This is the issue for any US/western regime change operation in Iran (whatever one may think of its moral merits or lack thereof).

Iran is not Syria, there's a lot of wily people in the leadership and they won't be rolled over so easily

viking12316 days ago

Yeah, wonder why Trump doesn't threaten North Korea? Because they actually have achieved all this, internal internet completely sealed, nuclear weapons and developing ballistic missiles to reach the USA.

So actually.. getting the nukes was the right play for them because eventually they would get sold out by China or Russia. Having nukes gets you to shake hands and send love letters to Trump. Frankly Trump sees Europeans as total cucks and has more respect for Kim Jong-un

If Iran actually had nukes, the Israeli lead bullying would immediately halt.

pjc5016 days ago

Everyone seems to have forgotten the independent French nuclear deterrent.

I should probably put an outside bet on the next country to get the Bomb being Poland, maybe by 2050. They've only just started building a civilian reactor, but weapons would make strategic sense for them.

+1
ben_w16 days ago
+1
viking12316 days ago
Symbiote16 days ago

> Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1]

This is already repeated by the Google Search AI summary, which is unfortunate since your reference (from 2012) doesn't seem to back it up.

alephnerd16 days ago

Much of this capacity only started getting built out after 2012. Heck, Arvaan Cloud was only founded in 2015 and operated under the radar hidden from the sanctions regime until 2020.

metalman16 days ago

I get a sense that the Irainian government is playing a sophisticted game with there internet shut down and restarts, and are getting highly compitent advice from other countrys.perturb and observe, adjust and repeat. It is also fair to say that the current internal situation in Iran is 95% focused on the economy, and the only difference between there and the US, is that you get shot in the face, a bit less in the US, quantity, not quality.

samejewagain14 days ago

Do you realize how much hatred your country draws to itself by what it says its attempts to fix the world (Iran, Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, and so many others)?

Many of you are genuinely deceived by such claims, though I can only imagine the depth of ignorance / self deceit required for that.

Others repeat them knowing they are lying, thinking to themselves that the important thing is that they themselves are not living in the midst of civil wars caused by foreign interventions, and that eventually what is robbed from the miserable prople who are living in such hell, will trickle also to ther own pockets.

But the residents of the countries you bomb, either by yourselves or using the hands of others, and even these "others", they do know what is happening..

somejewoutthere16 days ago

[flagged]

Boltgolt16 days ago

Sometimes you start reading comments like this being like "interesting viewpoint", but then somehow Russia deciding to invade a foreign country is the fault of the west and you're like "ah it's a Russian troll"

somejewoutthere16 days ago

[flagged]

imtringued16 days ago

This narrative doesn't work when it's the Iranian government who is shutting down the internet to cover up their own wrongdoing.

lucasRW16 days ago

What I understand is that the Mollahs are hated by most Iranians, and that they have even managed to make the Persian population actually hate islam. Well done, bassij !

sparse9116 days ago

[flagged]

thesdev16 days ago

What the parent said. Our government has the right to kill its own people, and in thousands at that, nothing for you to see here /s

Parent is what we call a cyber soldier in Iran. They probably were on the streets in the past weeks shooting at protesters.

aerodog16 days ago

[flagged]

hersko16 days ago

Yeah, the complete collapse of their currency and brutal theocracy had nothing to do with it. All the protesters were MI-6, Mossad and CIA. There are apparently more foreign agents than citizens in Iran. Am i doing this right?

gsf_emergency_616 days ago

Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :)

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/19/in-iran-the-us-...

alephnerd16 days ago
gsf_emergency_616 days ago

What?! that's literal sniping

alephnerd16 days ago

This conversation and thread is about the Iranian NIN. If you want to talk about Gaza, you can post that to HN and start the discussion there.

It is irrelevant with regards to conversations about the Iranian NIN and is essentially a form of whataboutism.

gsf_emergency_616 days ago

That article I linked was about Tehran, first photo is of Tehran, though it might look like Gaza

hshdhdhj444416 days ago

Jeffrey Sachs in other places has admitted Trump cannot think in terms of strategy so ascribing any strategy to whatever the U.S. has been doing in Iran is a categorical mistake and the entire article appears to be a case of p-hacking to try and fit the facts to the authors’ pre-determined narrative.

gsf_emergency_615 days ago

True but remember J D Vance, just to pick a convenient example, probably has a stronger finger on the pulse

larodi16 days ago

Perhaps next time brave Persian people will figure a way to do all of it without internet, as it turned the weakest point of the whole effort.

trhway16 days ago

weakest point is fire guns on one side and no guns to speak of on the other side. To understand the scale of Iranian killing - for 23 days of protests up to 20K people killed - that is half of the killing rate in Ukraine war which is a full scale war with a 1000km battle line and more than 1M of soldiers shooting at each other.

jimbohn16 days ago

Just to be clear, I think you meant to say it's half the civilian casualty rate in Ukraine. Aside from guns, it seems like the Iranian government also pulled in foreign mercenaries to shoot on their own citizens, geez.

trhway16 days ago

No, fortunately civilian casualties in Ukraine are significantly less than that (except for Mariupol where 20-50K civilians were killed during 2 months of fighting in 2022). It is the soldiers deaths, 500-1500/day each side.

jimbohn16 days ago

Ah, I see, I misread the part about rate, my bad.

gsf_emergency_616 days ago

No worries, we might have full-scale soon https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/21/us-iran-threaten-br...

larodi16 days ago

okay I can't wait to see then how this works out in the USA where guns can answer from all directions. Is this you're implying? what is discussed here is lack of internet, not the fact that fcuking regime obnoxiously killed thousands of protesters shooting them in the face like rats. Is this what you came here to read, because it's not all over the internet and quite apparent for everyone?

But, wait, this is Iran ran by the revolutionary guards... What did anyone expect? Was it right to tell this people - help is on the way, when there was none?

Sorry, downvote as much as you like, but I'll reiterate - the brave Persian people will do it better next way, as they now know tis entirely up to them, no help comes. And they are super brave to do what they did, where did you exactly got wrong what I wrote??

Honestly - the weakest point is and will always be communication, once you loose it you fire in the dark. Like many other revolts, this also was heavily dependent on internet coordination, means controlled by the government.

trhway16 days ago

Revolutions have been succeeding long before internet. They did usually have had guns though.

larodi15 days ago

Sure. Revolutions of the past mostly. Some had succeeded with less bloodshed also. But let’s think for a moment / internet is the first thing going down when modern revolts ignite - not only in Persia, but also in India, Africa, Mianmar and others…

So perhaps being able to organise is much more challenging to the status quo than having a pistol in every house. I would also argue 21st century revolutions are perhaps a little different from others before.

I can easily imagine a very massive cyber revolt where communications are brought to a standstill for the ruling elite. But while imaginable is hard to enact in practice and someone else in the comments noted many top Iranian officials had an IT or engineering backgrounds which makes them better prepared and the whole effort much more challenging.