Iran frees WhatsApp and Google Play, keeps tight grip on others

The head of the Isfahan Chamber of Commerce, Amir Kashani, told Bourse Press earlier this month that he estimates a total annual loss to the steel industry at around $4 billion.

In an interview with state television last week, an official of Abbas Abad Industrial Compound in the southeast of Tehran said the industries based in the compound are facing power cuts of up to 14 hours a day.

The industrial area is home to dozens of factories producing electronic and household appliances, car parts, plastic, and dairy products.

Mohsen Zabihi, the coordination deputy of TAVANIR, Iran's government-owned energy company, said on December 15 that low winter temperatures and the increase in domestic gas use have caused serious shortages in the supply of fuel to power plants, particularly in the northern areas of the country.

He announced that all industrial units have been informed that they must reduce their electricity consumption by 50 percent from 6am to 5pm, by 90 percent between 5pm to 12am, and by 70 percent until 6am the next day.

The continued disruption to production is putting many workers in danger of losing their jobs. In an unusually candid admission, Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said on Monday that production companies are facing serious issues including cash flow problems and inability to pay the workforce due to power shortages.

Producers say power cuts are damaging their machinery and products, particularly food with poultry farmers reporting extensive deaths of young chickens, and dairy producers' products saying their products are spoiling during power cuts.

With the drastic deterioration of the economy in the past few years, workers’ strikes to protest low wages and long delays in the payment of their salaries have become more common.

If the situation worsens, the risk of protests looks increasingly high, with Mohseni-Ejei briefing security and intelligence officials to ready for such unrest, reminiscent of the nationwide protests of 2019.

Around 80 percent of Iran's electricity is produced from fuel. Officials say the private sector owns around 65 percent of fuel power plants.

However, many companies described as private are owned fully or partially by various state entities such as Bonyad-e Shahid, Bonyad-e Mostazafan, and government-owned banks such as Bank Sepah.

As in most other sectors, there is no transparency in data on electricity production, profits, and losses of fuel power plants but experts say they have been consistently accumulating huge losses since 2018 for various reasons including the government’s strict control of prices and failure to pay its debts to them.

Iran's minister of energy, Abbas Aliabadi, recently told reporters that "a considerable number" of organizations or individuals have been putting strain on the grid due to illegal Bitcoin mining. However, this includes state bodies such as the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the burden only adding to existing issues such as the dilapidation of power plants and the government's failure to store enough fuel for running them in the winter.

"Raising such an issue, especially in these critical times for the region and the world, is deeply concerning and amounts to a surprise gift to the enemies in the soft war against Iran," the lawmakers said, adding that Iran’s adversaries seek to incite unrest and social turmoil in the country.

They urged the council not to be swayed by emotional and sensationalist rhetoric in making its decision.

Iran has one of the world’s worst internet censorships with tens of thousands of websites blocked since the early 2000s and most major social media platforms banned.

Critics of Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian have recently said that the ongoing deadlock over enforcing the new hijab law and lifting censorship on the Internet has effectively paralyzed his administration.

As internet restrictions and social media blackouts continue in Iran, in spite of promises from President Masoud Pezeshkian to lift them, even the restricted local media have called for the resignation of his communications minister.

Sattar Hashemi has become a popular scapegoat for Iran’s complex censorship system, even if the dossier is largely out of his hands and run by the country’s ruling clerics and the security establishment.

Sazandegi columnist Faezeh Momeni said that "Hashemi has not even started the process of lifting the filtering, four months after he got the parliament's vote of confidence as IT and Communication Minister.”

An open letter called on President Masoud Pezeshkian, who in his election campaign promised to lift restrictions, "to appoint a new minister who would be committed to put an end to filtering."

The Minister of Economy, Abdolnasser Hemmati, recently said that "80 percent of Iranians use internet blockage circumvention tools [VPNs] to overcome the filtering and that imposes a cost of two million rials per month (around $3) on every Internet user."

He also said that "filtering causes heavy losses for the economy by restricting people's livelihood,” but only said that filtering is likely to be lifted gradually to avoid risking damage to “infrastructure”.

However, Iranian lawyer Kambiz Nowruzi told Sazandegi that lifting internet restrictions requires no specific infrastructure. “The decision to lift filtering only requires the approval of a majority—half plus one—of the 12 members of a committee, six of whom are representatives of the Pezeshkian administration," he said.

“If Pezeshkian can secure the support of at least one of the two representatives from the parliament or one of the four representatives from security organizations, the filtering can be lifted.”

He said the current filtering is illegal as per the country’s constitution which guarantees the public’s right to access information.

"From a legal point of view, the President can lift the filtering, but political and administrative realities of the country do not allow him to do that,” Nowruzi added.

In this year’s Freedom House report on internet freedom, the rights watchdog ranked Iran third in the world’s least free countries on digital freedom.

“The regime has taken steps to make access to the global internet more cumbersome and expensive, and drive users to a domestic version of the internet where authorities can more effectively control content and monitor users,” its report said.

“The regime also employs extensive censorship, surveillance, content manipulation, and extralegal harassment against internet users, making Iran’s online environment one of the world’s most restrictive.”

Since the 2022 uprising, the government has instructed internet service providers to increase their prices as much as 40 percent, making access significantly more expensive while localized internet shutdowns have continued.

In February, the Supreme Council for Cyberspace prohibited the use of unlicensed virtual private networks (VPNs) and pushed users seeking to access blocked or filtered web content to use domestic circumvention tools.

Internet expert Saeed Souzangar told Sazandegi newspaper that "using VPNs imposes a heavy burden on the backbone of the country's Internet system by increasing the volume of data transfers across the network."

It also diverts vast amounts of revenue to foreign companies such as Elon Musk’s Starlink. The website wrote, "There are at least 20,000 Starlink terminals in Iran and every one of them is paying at least $100 to Starlink, which adds up to $2 million per month."

Speaking about the mounting pressure on the minister of communications, Akbar Montajabi, the editor-in-chief of Sazandegi, told Rouydad24, ”The minister fears reaction by hardliners."

He said the minister is "an inefficient man who does not understand the requirements of modern living,” with millions of Iranians depending on the internet for commercial purposes.

"If we have the people with us, no power can ground us, and we will not encounter problems. We must have the people on our side and consider the people's problems as our own and have solutions for them," Masoud Pezeshkian said during the meeting held on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the ministry.

Iran's intelligence apparatus is comprised of several parallel agencies overseen by different state bodies.

The Ministry of Intelligence, established shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, was the first. It was later joined by intelligence organizations within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the police. Most recently, in 2023, the Judiciary established its own intelligence department, creating a fourth parallel structure.

President Pezeshkian emphasized the need to foster hope in society, saying, "We must do something so that people become hopeful about the government and about the future of the country,” according to a readout of the meeting from his office.

Urging closer scrutiny of officials' performance, Pezeshkian added, "We must assess whether those entrusted with responsibility have performed effectively. We must address why problems remain despite our capabilities and entrust the country to capable and expert managers."

Amid widespread public discontent over power outages and energy shortages disrupting businesses and daily life in Iran, the Judiciary has instructed provincial prosecutors to coordinate with intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies to prevent unrest as was seen in 2019 and 2022.

The UN fact-finding mission, established following the 2022 nationwide protests, has accused Iran's intelligence apparatus, including the Ministry of Intelligence, of human rights violations, including the extraction of forced confessions from political prisoners.

The Iranian security apparatus, which also has smaller intelligence entities, has a Council for Intelligence Coordination comprised of at least 13 to 16 separate active intelligence agencies, according to different sources.

Most of these parallel agencies have strong ties with the IRGC and the judiciary as well as the office of the Supreme Leader. The intelligence minister, the interior minister, foreign minister, and the country’s chief justice are members of the body. The IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, and its Intelligence Protection Organization, and their counterparts in the traditional Army and Police force as well as cyber police are some of the other members.

The crisis has reportedly forced the US-designated Bonyad-e Mostazafan (Foundation of the Oppressed), a powerful state-run charitable organization that has expanded into various sectors, including tourism, to sell its hotels.

"The condition of this industry is so dire that Bonyad-e Mostazafan has been forced to sell its hotels," the agency owner said.

Last year in December, Ebrahim Pourfaraj, the head of the Association of Iranian Tour Operators, said Iran's tourism industry was at its lowest point.

Iran, historically known for its rich cultural and historical heritage as well as its natural beauty, has struggled to attract foreign tourists in recent years, exacerbated by the detention of foreigners and dual-nationals. Despite its allure, the country faced challenges such as strict dress codes for women and restrictions on alcohol and nightlife.