Iran To Continue Social Media Ban, Grant Access To Regime Insiders
As protests in Iran began in mid-September, the government blocked Instagram, the only international social media platform people were allowed to use.
As protests in Iran began in mid-September, the government blocked Instagram, the only international social media platform people were allowed to use.
Other platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Telegram were banned after the 2009 Presidential election and in the aftermath of the November 2019 protests.
Despite the bans, Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are present on social media and some have more than one account on every platform. Other Iranians also continue to use social media apps by paying for VPNs [Virtual Private Networks] that allow them to circumvent the ban.
Social media has revolutionized the authoritarian information space in Iran. The government has lost its monopoly on information and desperately tries to control the Internet. Social media has become a town square where citizens gather to criticize and berate the clerical regime.
Abbas Abdi, a reformist pundit who is allowed to express mild criticism of the regime has written to urge the government to follow what people say on social media, because that is where most people are talking. Mentioning the fact that President Ebrahim Raisi has visited all of Iran’s 31 provinces to see how people live and hear their complaints, Abdi told the government in a social media post that they are missing the chance to hear the people in the “largest Iranian province” – social media.
He likened social media to an underprivileged province, saying, "Social media in Iran is like a province with a population of 50 million."
Abdi then reminded the government that "Around 75 percent of Iranians over the age of 18 years use at least one of social media platform, and there are others who simply use the Internet for searching or emailing." He added that "Some 64 percent of these people are on WhatsApp, 45 percent on Instagram, and 36 percent on Telegram."
The commentator highlighted that "This is the statistics from six months ago. Currently, more people are using social media, 20 percent of them for business," and pointed out that the number of social media users is even higher among the youth” with 83 percent using apps for messaging, fun or business.
Abdi further reminded that many Iranians' livelihood depends on their presence on social media while the government has banned these platforms and created problems for many Iranians. He wrote: "The government's reason for blocking social media is that it says 90 percent of Internet content in Iran is under the control of the enemies…If 90 percent of those on social media are your enemies, then, whose government are you?"
Abdi then stated that "At least 20 percent of those on social media in Iran earn their daily” by ecommerce and he asked the government: "Do you know that you are preventing 10 million people from having an income? Do you understand that Iran is suffering from a 40-percent inflation rate? How should these people make a living?"
On 25 October, Iranian sociologist Hossein Abolhassan Tanhaei wrote in an article, which was also posted in a series of tweets, that the government's plan to give discriminatory access to the Internet to various groups of Iranians and prevent each group from accessing certain information "will lead to public anger by giving everyone a reason to believe they have been subject to discrimination."
Tanhaei wrote that currently, people have very little trust in the government and this feeling of discrimination will trigger public anger. Like Abdi, Tanhaei also noted that Iranians running their business on social media platforms will be affected by restricted access more than everyone else, and they will show the most serious reaction to the government's plan.
On 22 October, clerics at the Qom Seminary wrote a letter to Raisi demanding a permanent ban on WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram. Meanwhile, according to reformist daily Arman Melli, the Friday prayer imam of Mashad Ahmad Alamolhoda, Raisi's father-in-law, also called for a ban on Instagram. This comes while, according to the head of Iran's passive defence organization Gholamreza Jalali, "Iranian officials have unrestricted access to Instagram."
According to Jalali, the final decision about the ban on social media will be made by the Supreme Council of National Security, which operates under the President to carry out direct orders coming from Khamenei. Even before the "final" decision is made, Behrouz Mohebbi, an Iranian lawmaker close to Khamenei's senior adviser Ali Larijani told Arman Melli on Monday that "The government will most certainly not lift the ban on WhatsApp and Instagram as these platforms are supervised by the enemies of the Islamic Republic."
Addressing the Haaretz Democracy Conference on Monday, Zelensky said that the Islamic Republic would have not been able to send equipment to Russia if Israel had not decided to stay neutral in the Ukraine war.
“In eight months of full-scale war, Russia has used almost 4,500 missiles against us. And their stock of missiles is dwindling. Therefore, Russia went looking for affordable weapons in other countries to continue its terror. It found them in Iran,” noted Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president further noted that “I have a question for you – how does Russia pay Iran for this, in your opinion? Is Iran just interested in money? Probably not money at all, but Russian assistance to the Iranian nuclear program. Probably, this is exactly the meaning of their alliance.”
Although Zelensky did not offer any evidence, Russia has built Iran’s sole nuclear power plant in Bushehr and has a contract to expand the plant with the addition of two new reactors at a cost of $10 billion.
Zelensky’s comments come as the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate said Monday that Russia's mobilized soldiers are being provided with Iranian-made body armors and helmets, and new groups of “advisers” are also arriving in Russia to train them on the use of a new and more lethal type of drones, Arash UAVs.
Major General Kyrylo Budanov stated that “Russian forces have used most of their cruise missile arsenal and only have 13 percent of their pre-war Iskander, 43 percent of Kaliber, and 45 percent of Kh-101 and Kh-555 pre-war stockpiles left.”
Budanov added that with the supply of cruise missiles dwindling Russian military relies on Iranian drones, but Tehran can send 300 drones per shipment as it takes a long time to manufacture the drones.
In remarks reported Monday, Iran’s foreign minister appeared to accept as possible, despite past denials, that Moscow had used Iranian drones in Ukraine.
“If it is proven to us that Iranian drones are being used in the Ukraine war against people, we should not remain indifferent,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, as reported by Reuters.
The Iranian foreign ministry website and official news agencies last Friday reported Amir-Abdollahian denying claims at a European summit last week that Iran had supplied Russia with military drones deployed in the Ukraine war.
Last week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba officially asked for air defense systems and training from Israel’s Foreign Ministry in the face of attacks launched by Iranian Shahed drones. Yet, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz stressed “that we are not selling weapons to Ukraine.”
However, Israeli Prime Minister told Jerusalem Post on Sunday that Tel Aviv is increasingly concerned by the “dangerous closeness” between Moscow and Tehran over the supply of Iran-made drones to attack Ukraine.
Lapid said Israel is holding daily assessments to review its position on the conflict, adding that “It’s not something we are going to ignore or do nothing about… so what we need to do is reassess on a daily basis and react.”
Meanwhile, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday that Iran was making the world less safe by supplying Russia with drones to be used against targets in Ukraine.
The US has been “trying for a while now to have a nuclear agreement with Iran so that we can make the world a safer place and now they're going off aiding the Russians and making the world a less safe place,” added Pelosi.
With the long suspension of negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iran is now accused of involvement in the Ukraine war. On the other hand, Tehran’s crackdown on domestic protests is also drawing attention from the international community raising the possibility of more isolation and sanctions for Iran.
An Iranian daily on Tuesday said that the developments of the war in Ukraine are in an alarming way to the detriment of Iran.
Aftabnews warned the Iranian government that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an aggressive move to occupy an independent UN member state and the governments that support the aggressor will be considered violators of international law.
“It is said that the United States and three European countries have interpreted the provision of drones by Iran as a violation of UN Resolution 2231. If proved after investigations, it will justify and legitimize the activation of the snapback mechanism against Iran in the JCPOA agreement,” Aftabnews added.
If the snapback mechanism would be triggered, Iran will return to Chapter Seven of the UN Charter and all sanctions in place before the 2015 nuclear deal would be automatically reimposed on Iran.
Private sector trade officials have repeatedly warned about the massive damage that the six-week-old government internet disruption is causing to the production cycle and its destructive effect on the livelihoods of millions.
Deputy Chairman of Iran Chamber of Commerce Hossein Selahvarzi told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) last week that production of many commodities including dairy products, medicine, textiles, and steel has been affected. “It’s naïve to think that disruption of the internet and filtering of so many websites, [online] programs, and platforms will only affect small businesses,” he added.
Selahvarzi explained that many operations including logistics as well as marketing and sales, financial transactions in foreign currencies are impacted and that the disruption will cause a drop in sales and profits. This will force companies to lay off workers in an already depressed economy.
According to Selahvarzi, the current unrest and lack of access to the internet has also resulted in the cancellation of visits and cooperation plans by foreign trade officials and businessmen.
There are many reports on social media about the scarcity of pharmaceutical products such as intravenous solutions, antibiotics, and even simple over-the-counter painkillers in most parts of the country.
He added that recurrent unrest since 2009, when a disputed election drew huge crowds of protesters to the streets, has resulted in a drop in investment, economic growth rate, and unemployment.
From the very early days of the protests, social media users reported serious damage to a host of small and home-based businesses. These businesses relied on the internet, social media, and messaging applications for advertising and selling their products.
These small businesses, particularly those run from homes by women or small farms in rural areas, heavily relied on Instagram for advertising and WhatsApp for communication with potential customers. The government has specifically blocked these two apps used by protesters.
The number of these businesses exponentially grew after the Covid pandemic.
Larger e-commerce companies such as online retailers, hotel and transportation bookings and food delivery services have business and there are reports of many companies having serious difficulties in paying salaries and instalments of loans.
The government has been using the so-called “kill-switch” since antigovernment protests and civil disobedience began six weeks ago to stop the flow of information and footage of protests as well to disrupt communication among protesters. The use of VPNs and anti-filtering software has increased by 30-fold since the unrest began following the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of morality police.
Despite the toughest curbs that have been put into force, both information and footage have trickled out as young and tech-savvy protesters persevere, sometimes spending hours to post a single short video.
Authorities insist that foreign enemies take advantage of social media and messaging applications to incite “riots” against the government and insist that Iranians should use the National Information Network (NIN), a very tightly controlled intranet, and domestically developed applications such as Rubika and Rubio.
Experts say these applications are specifically developed to allow censorship and are very unsafe as they allow authorities to trace and identify users who do not abide by the censorship rules.
The Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman claimed Monday that relations between Iran and Russia are not against any party and do not violate the international legal framework.
Naser Kanani told a news conference that “those who accuse Iran of supporting one side of the war are sending weapons to a warring side themselves,” implicitly referring to large Western military assistance to Ukraine.
Ukraine, the United States and Western countries say Iran has supplied military drones to Russia that are being used to attack civilian and infrastructure targets, and have begun imposing sanctions on Tehran.
Kanaani also rejected accusations that Iran has sent forces to Russian-occupied Crimea saying that “this is a media war to distract minds from the destructive role of Westerners in the Ukraine war.”
The US had earlier said that Iranian experts were in Crimea helping the Russians use Iranian supplied drones.
His comments come as Iran’s Supreme Leader in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin back in July clearly expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
While describing war as “brutal and hard,” Iran’s leader suggested that had Russia not “taken the initiative, the other side, with its own initiative would have created a war anyway.”
In that meeting Khamenei said “NATO is a dangerous creature [that] didn’t recognize any limits or borders. If you cannot stand up to them in Ukraine, then a little while later, with the excuse of Crimea, they would have started this war anyway.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Kanani accused US officials of “telling lies and being hypocritical” regarding the talks over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
“If the Americans say the negotiations have stopped, why do they send messages through intermediaries?” reiterated Kanani, adding that “it is clear Washington wants to return to the agreement but not pay its costs.”
His allegations come as US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, on October 19 said reviving the 2015 nuclear deal is “not our focus right now.”
“Nothing we’ve heard in recent weeks suggests they have changed their position. And so right now our focus is on the remarkable bravery and courage that the Iranian people are exhibiting through their peaceful demonstrations,” he stated.
During his Monday statements, the Iranian spokesperson also claimed that the West is supporting anti-regime protests in Iran saying, “If Americans have bet on the domestic developments of Iran these days, they have made a mistake.”
Tehran routinely blames the West and Israel for negative events in Iran, not willing to admit that many of its citizens oppose clerical rule.
He also criticized recent sanctions by the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed for the brutal crackdown on protesters in Iran, stating that “supporting disorder, insecurity and instability is an illegal behavior. It is an irresponsible act to support rioters and those who have a history of terrorist activities.”
This comes as the Islamic Republic is designated by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984 for supporting and organizing militant groups around the region.
In another part of his comments, Kanani claimed that relations between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are on the right track and the sides are having “constructive ties.”
However, Wall Street Journal correspondent Laurence Norman says there has been zero significant contact between Iran and the IAEA recently calling the claims “a heap of falsehoods”.